Quikr Close To Acquiring Majority Stake In Commonfloor For $50 Mn: Report

Classifieds major Quikr that was earlier rumored to eye real estate startup Housing.com, is now eyeing to acquire majority stake in Bangalore-based Commonfloor for over $50 Mn, reported ET.

New York-based Tiger Global, which is an investor  in both the startups is said to be the common link and the mediator between the two. This development comes at a time when both the companies have been looking for a suitor. While Quikr has been eyeing a potential target in the realty space, Commonfloor has been looking to raise funds.

The deal with Housing was supposed to be an all the cash and stock deal valued at $175 Mn, though it fell apart since the two could not reach to an agreement on the pricing. Interestingly, soon after the talks with Housing fell apart, Commonfloor was reported to be in talks for probable acquisition, the company, however refused it then.

Recently, it launched QuikrHomes that already sees 2 lakh real estate transactions. The talks are whether post, acquisition, Commonfloor would remain independent or would be merged in this this category.

Commonfloor competes with major online portals is real estate buying selling space like Housing.com, Makaan.com, Indiaproperty, Magicbricks, 99Acres and more. It recently acqui-hired a chat platform Bakfy. Under this, the team joins the acquirer as Entrepreneurs-In-Residence and will work directly with the founders. Quikr too has similar instant chat platform, QuikrNxt that lets users chat or share something with everyone without revealing name.

Started in 2008 by Pranay Chulet and Jiby Thomas, Quikr was originally started as Kijiji India, later changed. It is among the Unicorns, startups valued at $Bn dollar. It has received investments from Tiger Global, Warburg Pincus, Steadview Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. Earlier this year, in April it had secured $150Mn funding from existing investor Tiger Global and eBay and fresh investment from Steadview Capital. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quikr Mauritius Holding.

Quikr is a classified platform competing with Argentina-based OLX. Its main categories are cars, real estate, jobs, household electronics and goods.  It recently started a QuikrJobs to cater to blue-collar and entry level white-collar job seekers, with already 2.5 Mn active candidate profiles and 1.6 Mn jobs listed on the platform.

Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani founded Commonfloor in same year as Quikr. It has raised $60Mn from Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Google Capital. It is said to be valued at a around $100Mn, after the last round of funding of $10-$12 Mn from Google Capital. Commonfloor has around a million downloads on Google Playstore.
Just a week back, it launched CommonFloor Smart Guard, a mobile app for gated communities.

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