The startup raised the funds at a post-money valuation of $1.01 billion, making it India’s first property tech—or proptech—unicorn. NoBroker’s latest valuation is a 2.5x jump from when it raised funds in 2020 at a valuation of $400 million. It has raised a total of $361 million to date.
The significant uptick in valuation comes on the back of an increase in the purchase and sale of real estate, the company’s addition of offerings that went beyond its listing service, and a drop in interest rates post-Covid.
“In the past couple of years we have transformed ourselves from just a real estate transaction platform to a one-stop-shop. And this has given us a huge boost because clearly the number of transactions is increasing and customers are finding a lot more value in our services,” said cofounder Saurabh Garg.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup was founded by Garg, Akhil Gupta and Amit Kumar Agarwal in 2013. It will use the funds to build its product and technology team, go deeper into existing markets and enter more markets, for marketing, and to build NoBroker Hood, its “gated-community” app and marketplace.
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The startup also saw a boost in demand for home buying during Covid. “A huge number of transactions are coming from end-use customers, not investors who want to flip real estate quickly. So the demand has been robust,” said Gupta, adding that sees this trend continuing in the near future.
The company’s revenue from operations in FY20 stood at Rs 63.34 crore. It said its revenue has been tripling every year.
NoBroker operates a brokerage-free real estate platform and captures the entire customer journey from listing a house to hiring packers and movers, securing a home loan, painting and cleaning services, legal services and rent payments, among other things. It claims to have more than 1.5 crore registered users across six cities—Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR. The company did not reveal how many users pay for its services.
