Moneycontrol News

Losses of internet-based real estate companies -- Housing.com, PropTiger, MagicBricks, 99acres and CommonFloor -- jumped nearly 65 percent collectively to Rs 762 crore for the year ended March 31, as per a report by the Financial Express.

However, notwithstanding the loss, the revenues of the companies have increased from Rs 311 crore from Rs 173 crore in 2014-15.

Legal Experts say consistent losses in the books of these companies, despite increasing revenues, might foster consolidation in the space.

Previous acquisitions 

Quikr acquired CommonFloor to expand its network in the segment. In 2015 end, Quikr acquired agents aggregator Indian Realty Exchange and analytics firm RealtyCompass.

Both Quikr and CommonFloor had Tiger Global as their main investor.

Maxheap Technologies, promoter of CommonFloor, reported 50 percent increase in losses to Rs 131 crore and a minor drop in revenues to Rs 31 crore for FY16.

PropTiger acquired the Softbank-backed promising startup Housing.com in January 2017. The real estate startup was valued at USD 70-75 million, which took the value of the merged entity to USD 270-285 million.

Housing.com’s online leads for property complemented PropTiger’s offline operations.

In FY16, however, combined losses of the two entities mounted 46 percent to Rs 462 crore, even as revenue doubled to Rs 43 crore.

On the other hand, losses for the online property platform 99acres, owned by Info Edge, more than doubled during FY16 to Rs 91 crore. Revenue though, only improved marginally to Rs 111 crore from Rs 110 crore in the previous fiscal.

According to InfoEdge’s management, the growth in 99acres moderated due to demonetisation and uncertainties due to the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act (RERA).

Samir Jasuja, CEO and Founder of PropEnquiry pointed out that demonetisation in November 2016 was responsible for slowed transaction in real-estate companies.

“Following the merger and acquisitions, raising capital will be problem if revenues continue to be static and show no growth,” he said.