Realty portal Makaan.com facilitates 25,000 transactions after launch of new business model

News Corp-backed realty portal Makaan.com has facilitated about 25,000 buy-sell and renting transactions in the last one-and-a-half years after it transformed the platform from classified to a marketplace. Singapore-based Elara Technologies had formed the realty portal PropTiger.com in 2011 and later acquired Makaan.com in May 2015 and Housing.com in January 2017 to create India’s largest full service online-to-offline real estate platform. More than a year after acquiring Makaan.com, Elara in mid-2016 launched a new business model of offering free and unrestricted number of listings to sellers/brokers, helping it to attract over 15,000 active sellers with more than 8.5 lakh properties listing on its platform. “We are very excited about Makaan.com. It has a revolutionary business model that goes beyond lead generation. It has the potential to disrupt the online real estate industry,” Dhruv Agarwala, the CEO of PropTiger, Housing and Makaan, told PTI.

The new model has been widely accepted and has helped Makaan.com in facilitating about 25,000 transactions over the last 18 months, said Ravi Bhushan, Group Chief Product and Technology Officer, Housing-PropTiger-Makaan. Of the total transactions, nearly 60 per cent were from renting while the rest from buy-sell. “When we pivoted from a classified platform to a marketplace in mid-2016, our entire focus was on creating an alignment between home seeker, seller, and the platform. We believe in an open market where the only currency is listing quality. With no entry barriers for sellers, we wanted to ensure maximum option for homebuyers,” Bhushan said.

Elaborating about the platform, he said, Makaan.com is now based on the success-fee model under which brokers share some part of their revenue after completing the transactions from the leads generated on the platform. For buy-sell of properties in the secondary market, Makaan charges Rs 8,000-15,000 per transaction depending on the location. For renting, it gets Rs 3,000-6,000 per transaction. “Disclosing transaction helps sellers get business and branding furthermore on the platform. Given the fairness in pricing, sellers find this model an incentive to list quality properties and get a more extensive reach without paying upfront,” he added.

With credible listings data and real-time intelligence on property search, Bhushan said, Makaan.com has become a preferred choice for consumers looking to rent, buy or sell a home. “In an industry plagued with information asymmetry and distrust, building a trusted marketplace has not been an easy task,” he said. Each agent on Makaan.com is rated by the consumer on the basis of his/her experience, Bhushan said, adding that this self-regulating mechanism ensures that only sellers with quality listings and high ratings get promoted on the platform to help home seekers in their decision making.

While Makaan largely deals in buy-sell of re-sale properties, group company PropTiger helps developers in selling flats available in primary market. Housing.com is a classified platform for both developers and brokers. Unlike Makaan.com, developers and brokers need to buy a package for listing of their properties on Housing.com.