PropTiger Nabs $5 Million In Second Round Of Funding


New Delhi: The real estate marketing services startup PropTiger Realty that runs the online platform PropTiger.com, has raised $5 million in the second round of funding led by Accel Partners and SAIF Partners. Prior to this, the company has raised a small round from HNIs and have not publicly shared details of that.

Launched in 2011 by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma and Prashan Agarwal, PropTiger is an independent real estate advisor with a pan-India presence. Dhruv and Kartik were classmates at Harvard Business School and had previously built iTrust Financial Advisors. Prashan is an alumns of IIT Kanpur and ISB Hyderabad. It currently has 200 employees spread across 8 cities in India.

Talking about the interest of the investing firm, Dhruv, Co-Founder, PropTiger said, “VC interest in our company has been very strong. In our first year of existence, we have worked hard to achieve the operating metrics that we have hit and the VCs have been impressed with what we have been able to achieve within a short period of time and with the limited resources that a young start-up like ours has access to.”

Headquartered in NCR, the company focuses on marketing new residential real estate developments, aimed at the mid-end of the market. PropTiger has in-house real estate experts, who initiate contact with customers and offer end-to-end services starting from identifying apartment options, organizing site visits, budget and affordability analysis. The company’s target is to reach 10,000 crores of gross value of property sold by 2016.

Prashan, Co-Founder, PropTiger added, “Real estate developers are pleasantly surprised at our ability to create and aggregate demand for their new launches, thus allowing them to focus on their core activity of building and executing new projects. We look forward to becoming the preferred channel partner for builders across India who can benefit from our marketing expertise.”

The company plans to continue to focus on providing an honest, reliable and transparent service to home buyers. At the other end, it will further improve the efficiency of how developers can market their inventory of new homes to home buyers. In terms of activities, the company plans to improve its website and technology to provide a better online and post-sales experience. It will also increase the sale staff strength to go deeper in markets where it already has a presence.

Commenting on the competiton, Kartik, Co-Founder, PropTiger adds, “ Real estate services offered to families looking to buy homes have traditionally been underbranded and served by the unorganized sector. More recently there have been some companies that have created online classifieds companies, but only help in someone finding information through a listing of the property in their database. We offer end to end services where we guide the end buyer through the entire process of home buying ranging from identification, affordability, paperwork and applying for a loan. The market is big enough to support many different players, although we expect that over time buyers would prefer to deal with an organized branded player who is more professional than a mom and pop brokers.”

Founded in 2001 SAIF Partners has over 20 investments in India since its inception. Its primary areas of focus include Information Technology, Internet, Mobile, Consumer Products and Services, Healthcare, Cleantech, Education, Modern Agriculture, Financial Services and Manufacturing.

Accel Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, New York, India, London and China. Founded in 1983, it has over $6 billion under management and has invested in companies like Actuate, BBN, Kayak, Mu Sigma, Walmart.com, and several others.