In what may signal to an impending consolidation in the online realty market, Delhi-based PropTiger.com and its rival in Mumbai, Housing.com have merged in all stock deal to become India’s largest online real estate services company. 

Together, the newly merged entity will get fresh funding from global online real estate advertising company REA Group Housing.com’s existing investor Softbank. REA will invest $50 million in the joint entity, while Softbank will infuse another $5 million.

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The joint entity will draw on strengths of PropTiger, Housing.com and Makaan.com to offer a holistic experience to all stakeholders - consumers, real estate developments, brokers and homeowners. PropTiger is the largest online residential real estate brokerage firm, having completed transactions worth $1.5 billion since its founding in 2011, while Housing.com is India’s is an online platform for buying and selling homes, receiving over four million visits every month.

Even as the number of real estate portals in the country has been on the rise, experts tracking the sector said that they have still not been able to solve for consumer problems. Since there is no way to verify title deeds and real value of the property on an online portal, consumers often stay away from transacting on the site.

While realty websites have laid immense emphasis on acquiring ‘online’ customers – the first step when most of them have received private equity or venture capital funding -- in a later stage, they find it difficult to scale up. Most of the startups operating in this space thrive on advertisements from developers. But these measures alone are not sufficient to help them zoom into profitability or even break-even in a short to medium term.