Former Airtel & Snapdeal CPO Anand Chandrasekaran Backs Real Estate Startup NoBroker

Bengaluru-based real estate portal NoBroker has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investor and Entrepreneurial Product Leader, Anand Chandrasekaran.

The funding aims at strengthening the NoBroker’s investor portfolio which includes SAIF Partners, BEENEXT- Singapore-based venture capital firm run by Teruhide Sato, Digital Garage (early investor in Twitter), BEENOS, Qualgro and Mamoru Taniya of Asuka holdings.

“NoBroker.com is disrupting an age-old real estate industry. The business model is hugely scalable and the product reach has global potential. Innovative products driven by technology have removed intermediation in majority of sectors and it is happening in real estate as well. I am excited to guide their vision at a global level,” said Chandrasekaran.

NoBroker was launched in March 2014 by Amit Agarwal, Saurabh Garg, and Akhil Gupta with an aim to make real estate a broker-free space.

The portal offers smart recommendations based on real-time data – something which an offline broker can provide effectively, thereby helping the customer in making an informed decision.

The site algorithm is designed to keep the broker out of the system. When a new customer registers on its site, the algorithm works in the background and validates the user in around two minutes. This helps the team in creating an ecosystem of genuine owners and tenants.

NoBroker.com recently moved to a freemium subscription fee-based model. “There is a huge customer demand and acceptance of a brokerage-free real estate marketplace. Our focus is on building a profitable business by breaking-even next year,” said Amit.

To date, NoBroker has raised $13 Mn which included a $10 Mn Series B funding raised in February 2016,  and Series A round of $3 Mn in February  2015.

As claimed by the founders, the company has grown 20 times across all key dimensions: website visitors, registered users, and new property listings. It has served 1 Mn customers and is adding 1 lakh users on a monthly basis and witnessing 5 Lakh customer connections every month which leads to a saving of more than $2.7 Mn.

“Since inception, our focus has been on building a disruptive product and enhancing customer experience. Our product philosophy is driven by innovation and fulfillment of customers’ stated and unstated needs. We are excited to have Anand as an investor. His expertise in building products of global standards will help us take our disruption to the next level”, said Akhil Gupta, CTO and co-founder, NoBroker.com.

The market size of residential rental and resale brokerage alone in top 20 cities in India is $6.5 Bn and is estimated to grow to $17 Bn in the next 5 years.

Earlier in April 2016, online real estate portal Housing raised an undisclosed amount from Vineet Singh, former business head of 99Acres.