Soon people will be more confident of buying houses online: Advitiya Sharma

Q&A with the co-founder of Housing.com

Housing.com, a leading online real estate marketplace, has received $90 million in funding from Japan's Softbank. With this, housing.com has raised $121 million so far in 5 rounds since its launch in 2012. Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of Housing.com speaks to Reghu Balakrishnan on the company's journey so far and the days ahead. Edited excerpts:

The portal was launched 2 years ago, and in a short span, it received the largest funding. How did the journey begin?

The online marketplace for real estate properties was launched about 8 to10 years ago. But the errors, lack of authentic data and availability of only a few properties under single broker forced us to start something new, rectifying all those issues. During college days, I had gone through an advertisement of a 3BHK property in Bandra bandstand which was available for Rs 10,000. When I contacted a broker, he said that was rented out and he would provide another one in Bandra itself. The bad experience changed my perspective, forcing us to launch something new.

 

What innovations have been introduced by Housing.com in 2 years?

We have started with in-house data collection where our team visits houses, collects high quality pictures and collates the data. Later, data verification team vets the information and uploads it on the portal. With this, we can assure authentic and accurate information for our customers. When we realised people wanted to know about the surroundings of a property, we launched a map-based platform to help customers search for houses or flats near schools, hospitals, stations etc.

What are the main expansions planned with the latest funding?

We have raised $121 million in 5 rounds of funding. We are planning to add 300 cities and 40 million houses under house mapping options.

What's the current stakeholding pattern?

We are unable to disclose those details.

What role will online market place models play in the future?

We believe that technology will play a crucial role and people will be confident of buying houses online soon. For example, after our tie-up with Tata Value Houses for 4 projects in 3 cities, we sold half of the inventory in 5 days and got a gross merchandise value of Rs 50 crore. Other general e-commerce firms will have to do 1000 times of the transactions to achieve similar amount. We have seen that some NRI buyers from the US and even Africa are logging in and purchasing flats online in Indian cities. From 400 listings which took place 5 months ago, we see about 4000 listings a day.