Quikr Unveils O2O Platform QuikrRealty To Disrupt Real Estate Brokerage Industry

As Louis Glickman says, the best investment on earth is ‘Earth.’ The real estate business in India is expected to touch $180 Bn by 2020. Of this, a major part is brokerage industry, which is increasing at the rate of $4 Bn per year. Online Classifieds platform Quikr is now aiming to disrupt the real estate brokerage industry with its new brand QuikrRealty.

QuikrRealty has been launched in alliance with HDFC. In December 2017, Quikr acquired HDFC Realty, India’s first corporate real estate services company. Post acquisition, HDFC Realty has now turned into QuikrRealty. The company also acquired HDFC Red, another subsidiary of HDFC and merged it with QuikrHomes, the online real estate property listing platform of Quikr.

Both HDFC subsidiaries were acquired for a total of $54.8 Mn (INR 350 Cr).

In an interaction with Inc42, a Quikr spokesperson explained, “QuikrRealty will function as an online-offline brokerage business in both B2B and B2C domain.  Corporates, Institutions and even large builders can seek assistance for bulk transactions involving Buy/Sell/Lease of residential properties and office space expansions.”

QuikrRealty draws its demand from Quikr’s large real estate consumer base (which it has built through QuikrHomes and CommonFloor earlier), and in return, completes the transaction loop for the real estate property buyers on Quikr.

Talking about the creation of O2O platform, Renu Sud Karnad, Managing Director, HDFC Ltd. said, “With 220 Mn smartphone users and growing in leaps, these users are accessing online channels to make their purchase decisions and we are witnessing this trend in real estate too.”

“In this setting, QuikrRealty augurs well for the members of the real estate ecosystem due to its unique capability to translate online demand into actual transaction closures,” she added.

Key Services Offered By QuikrRealty

• Real estate developers will now be able to look forward to project-specific robust marketing campaigns with which they can opt for sales closure services.
• QuikrRealty will run tailor-made promotions aimed at prospective customers for specific properties.
• Consumers on QuikrHomes will be able to seek site visits, assistance in negotiations and closures from the properties they shortlist.
• From searching for a property to loans to purchase, Quikr will now be able to provide start to finish services for home buyers.

Further, in order to ensure the best coverage for its consumers, given the vast size of the Indian real estate industry, Quikr will continue to work with external brokers in all cities across its platforms.

As Pranay Chulet, Founder and CEO, Quikr, said, “After the recent regulatory changes, the stars are aligned for a strong market leader to step in and organise home buying in India. HDFC’s continued strategic association with QuikrRealty, QuikrHomes, and CommonFloor is a testimony to our leadership in real estate and in other large sectors that move the Indian economy.”

Having commenced operations in 2000, HDFC Realty has an established presence in 19 cities in India with over 300 expert real estate professionals. The full stack real estate services company, in its new avatar as QuikrRealty, will get major tech and demand amplification to cater to a much larger number of customers.

Quikr, on the other hand, boasts of over 30 Mn unique users a month. It is present in 1000 cities in India and operates several large classifieds businesses across real estate, automobiles, jobs, services, and goods.

Earlier, Quikr had acquired online realty portal CommonFloor in a stock-and-cash deal for $200 Mn in January 2016. In the same space, Quikr then went on to acquire Bengaluru-based home rental marketplace Grabhouse.

Prior to that in 2015, it had also acquired Indian Realty Exchange, a mobile-first aggregator of real-estate agents, and in the same year, had also acquired real estate portal Realty Compass.

The real estate brokerage industry is one of the most fragmented industries in India, wherein the offline network of brokers is still dominant. Quikr has definitely stepped into a goldmine and if successful, QuikrRealty and QuikrHomes could together become a single point of contact for all real estate related services in India.