Tiger Global-Backed NoBroker Acquires Society Connect

Bengaluru-headquartered real estate platform NoBroker has now announced the acquisition of Gurugram-based Society Connect in an all-cash deal.

Talking to Inc42, Amit Agarwal, cofounder and CEO, NoBroker said that the company wants to combine efficiencies of Society Connect’s ERP system along with Nobroker’s own visitor and community management app NoBrokerHood. He added that the company has one lakh flats under Nobrokerhood, and the acquisition will help this scale up to 2.5 Lakh flats.

Agarwal told us that 32 employees of Society Connect will join NoBroker and thus, Society Connect becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of NoBroker.

Founded in 2016 by Sourav Mukerjee, Shobhna Arora, and Manish Kumar Gupta, Society Connect is an integrated platform to manage everyday property operations. It has a presence in seven cities and provides an ideal solution for the society through easy to use technology both in terms of maintenance such as complaint management, dues tracking and payment, parking, notices, e-bills, accounting, visitor management and staff attendance etc.

Society Connect is currently deployed with realty players such as DLF, Unitech, etc and generates maintenance bills upwards of INR 350 cr per annum.

Agarwal told us that the company has three primary reasons for this acquisition:

• Society Connect is ERP product customers love
• It already has 1.5 lakh flats
• Quality of founders

As a result of the acquisition, NoBrokerHood will become a single software for a host of services such as accounting, facility management, security, maintenance requests, communication and visitor management requests that enhance society’s living experience.

NoBrokerHood was launched in 2019 and is currently deployed by 1000 societies across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Delhi-NCR.

Sourav Mukherjee, cofounder of Society connect said, “We look forward to bring our financial competence to NoBrokerHood to digitally transform and streamline activities for smooth user experience.”

Founded in 2014 by Akhil Gupta, Saurabh Garg and Amit Kumar, NoBroker is a real estate rental platform that provides verified listings from property owners, without brokerage fees for middlemen. Moreover, the platform also offers other services like rental agreements, movers and packers services, special packages for NRIs, relocation services for corporates, home loans for buyers and more.

Backed by marquee investors such as Tiger Global, General Atlantic, BEENEXT and SAIF Partners, the company has raised $121 Mn till date, with over $50 Mn in Series C and Series D funding in 2019.

Agarwal told us that after recording 3x growth last year, the company plans to target the same rate of growth this year.

The real estate sector in India is fuelled by rapid urbanisation and rural migration to cities. India has the largest number of proptech startups (77 of 179 funded proptech startups) in Asia-Pacific. The real estate sector in India is expected to reach a market size of $1 Tn by 2030 from $120 Bn in 2017 and contribute 13% of the country’s GDP by 2025.