Post-Merger With Housing, PropTiger Shows The Door To 200 Employees

Online real estate advisor PropTiger has shown the door to about 200 employees in a restructuring move.

Elara Technologies announced the restructuring aligned with its long-term business objective to become India’s largest full service online-to-offline (O2O) real estate platform. Singapore-based Elara Technologies Pte Ltd is the holding company of the combined entities comprising PropTiger, Housing, and Makaan.com.

Commenting on the move, PropTiger CEO Dhruv Agarwala said, “We have made a restructuring exercise to integrate the operations of the two companies.” He explained that the staff cut was due to the overlapping support functions of the two organisations.

In January 2017, it was announced that Softbank-backed Housing will be merged with rival PropTiger. As part of the transaction, PropTiger’s eventual investor REA Group Limited will invest $50 Mn in the joint entity, with an affiliate of SoftBank Group pumping in another $5 Mn.

PropTiger was founded by Dhruv Agarwala, Kartik Varma, and Prashan Agarwal in 2011.  It is backed by News Corp, SAIF Partners, Accel Partners, and Horizen Ventures.

As a part of the new restructuring plan, the combined entity will be led by Dhruv Agarwala as the CEO. Apart from this, Sunil Mishra will be the new Chief Strategy officer.

The new entity will now be divided into – platform and transaction businesses. With this move, Mani Rangarajan will be the Chief Business Officer for the platform business. It includes developer and broker-facing marketing solutions, visualisation products, data labs, and consulting.

The transaction business will be looked after by Bhaskar Bagchi as the Chief Business Officer. It comprises primary, resale and home loans operations. Ravi Bhushan Kumar will be the Chief Product and Technology Officer and will manage the product, design and technology functions for the merged entity.

Rohit Hasteer will continue to lead the Human Resources and Learning & Development functions for the group as the Chief Human Resource Officer and Vikas Wadhawan will continue in his role of Chief Financial Officer and manage FP&A, Legal, Compliance and Administration for the group.

According to an IBEF report, the Indian real estate market is expected to touch $180 Bn by 2020. Other players in this segment include 99acres, MagicBricks, Quikr, etc.