Japan's SoftBank pumps in Rs 100 crore in Housing.com

New Delhi: Japan's SoftBank has made a fresh investment of Rs 100 crore in Housing.com to help the realty portal consolidate its position in the heavily contested online property segment.

Housing.com, which competes with the likes of Rupert Murdoch-backed PropTiger, Magicbricks and Commonfloor, said it is building scalable revenue streams around its product.

"Housing.com has secured a fresh round of funding from Softbank, its largest investor. The new Rs 100 crore infusion will well-capitalise the company to drive its new strategy and growth plans," the Mumbai-based firm said in a statement.

In December 2014, Softbank had led a USD 90 million funding round in Housing.com. It had over 30 percent stake in the portal. However, neither parties disclosed the increase in stake after the fresh infusion.

"We continue to remain excited by Housing's prospects and we know that this infusion will help Housing get to the next level and further consolidate its presence in the Indian real estate market," said Jonathan Bullock, SoftBank Representative on Housing Board.

SoftBank had said last week that it may scale up its planned investment of USD 10 billion in the coming years as the telecom and Internet giant sees the "beginning of Big Bang" for the world's second most populous market.

SoftBank, had in 2014, announced plans to invest USD 10 billion in India over a decade. It has already put in USD 627 million into online marketplace Snapdeal and other companies like Housing.com and Ola.

Founded in 2012, Housing.com has raised over USD 100 million in capital from leading investors, including SoftBank, Nexus Ventures, Falcon Edge and Helion Ventures.

"Softbank is one of the world's largest and most successful investors... (It) signifies their long-term

commitment to the company. We are now well-capitalised to aggressively execute on our focused strategy and growth plans," Housing.com CEO Jason Kothari said.

Housing.com has decided to focus on buying and selling homes, the largest and most lucrative segment of the real estate market, and the funds will be deployed towards the same. Earlier, its focus was on listings of properties.

The infusion of fresh funds comes at a time when speculations were rife about eCommerce major Snapdeal buying the company.

The funding has come after restructuring of Housing.com operations after the exit of its co-founder and former CEO Rahul Yadav from the firm in July last year.

In November, it named Jason Kothari as its CEO. Later in the same month, it decided to restructure its business to focus only on buying and selling of apartments and also reduce its employee strength.

Yesterday, it announced the appointment of its co-founder Snehil Buxy as its chief product officer.

With 85 million visits in 2015 and 1.7 million verified listings to date, Housing.com has acquired an online community for real estate (India Real Estate Forum), a popular CRM for developers (HomeBuy360), and a data analytics and due diligence firm for real estate (Realty Business Intelligence).