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BroEx, India's largest network of real estate brokers, has raised $1 million in early-stage financing from Lightspeed India.
Currently, 25,000 brokers are actively using the network across all major metros such as Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore, as well as in cities like Pune, Ahmedabad and Jaipur, the company said.
The company plans to deploy these funds to expand to all Tier I, Tier II and Tier III cities in India. Additionally, funds will also be allocated for the next level of product development, including launching complimentary products and services for brokers to facilitate transactions.
The real estate brokerage market in India is currently dominated by 500,000 independent brokers and agencies and generates $4 billion in brokerage fee income for real estate sales and rentals annually, the company estimates.
Through BroEx, brokers tap into a broad network of trusted buy-side and sell-side brokers beyond their personal and professional networks.
Pallav Pandey, founder and CEO of BroEx, said: ‘‘We are re-imagining the real estate opportunity in India with the broker at the centre of the universe. This round of funding will help us consolidate our position as the preferred network and channel of communication for brokers and also get us ready to power transactions through our platform.''
Dev Khare, Managing Director at Lightspeed India, said: "Real estate in India is a deep and relatively untapped opportunity with a number of unsolved problems. We believe that the experienced team at BroEx, combined with the company's mobile-first network effects model and being the market's largest broker network, is a very solid foundation to disrupt the current status quo in the market.''
