Makaan eyeing 30% online realty mkt

Aiming to grab at least 30 per cent of the country's fast growing on-line realty market in four years, People Interactive Group's (PIG) realty portal Makaan.com will be spending Rs 40 crore to promote and ramp up operations in the next two years.

"We are a late entrant into the field, but want to grow faster. We will be investing Rs 8 crore this year towards promotion of the portal of the total investment of Rs 40 crore in the next two years," PIG's Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Mittal said here today.

PIG is a leading internet companies in the country. It operates Shaadi.com, Fropper.com and Astrolife.com portals.

"The on-line realty market is set to grow to Rs 1,050 crore in the next four years from Rs 30 crore now. Our target will be to achieve at least 30 per cent of that," Mittal said. Launched nearly two months back, Makaan.com has offices, manned by 3-4 people, in 14 top cities of the country.

It has plans to take it to additional 10 tier-II cities by the end of the next financial year and induct over 300 people. "Ours is essentially a user-generated portal. The more it will generate users, the more content will it create," Mittal said, on the limited spread and information of portal content.

"We are working hard to give superior experience to our target audiences - home seekers, builders and brokers. Our endeavour will be to satisfy the need and ambition of all our target audiences. And if we can serve that, our job is done," he said.

"Our job is to ensure least amount of duplication of properties and maximise freshness for a home seeker and try to enhance the platform for broker and the revenue.

At the same time, we will strive for bringing maximum audiences for builders," Mittal said.

Makaan.com's Chief Operating Officer Aditya Verma said PIG would soon start advertising campaign in print and electronic media to popularise the portal.

"Our job is to ensure least amount of duplication of properties and maximise freshness for a home seeker and try to enhance the platform for broker and the revenue. At the same time, we will strive for bringing maximum audiences for builders," Mittal said.

"The portal has recorded one lakh listings in a short span of two months. I hope this will grow faster when we come out with the advertisements. Since the word of mouth still works better, we will work towards ensuring better consumer satisfaction," Verma said.