Vijay Shekhar Sharma Backs Real Estate Portal NoBroker

Bengaluru-based brokerage-free real estate portal, NoBroker has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

NoBroker is a brokerage-free real estate portal that connects customers directly with each other by eliminating the middleman. It was launched in March 2014 by Akhil Gupta (IIT- Bombay), Amit Kumar Agarwal (IIT- Kanpur and IIM- Ahmedabad), and Saurabh Garg from (IIT- Bombay and IIM- Ahmedabad).

This investment will fuel NoBroker’s next phase of growth and customer acquisition.

Talking about the funding, Amit Agarwal, CEO & co-founder, NoBroker said, “We are excited to get Vijay as an investor. In our discussions, what he liked most in NoBroker is that it is a disruptive, scalable, and capital-efficient business.”

As per a company statement, NoBroker has served 1.5 Mn customers till now. NoBroker is adding more than 1 Lakh new registered customers on a monthly basis and witnessing 5 Lakh customer connections every month which leads to a saving of more than INR 20 Cr of brokerage monthly.

The startup recently moved to a freemium subscription-fee based model. The market size of residential rental and resale brokerage in the top 20 cities alone in India is a whopping $6.5 Bn which is estimated to grow to $17 Bn in next 5 years. NoBroker also offers brokerage-free buy/sell of properties.

Earlier in September 2016, NoBroker raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investor Anand Chandrasekaran.

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

Earlier in February 2016, NoBroker raised $10 Mn in Series B round of funding, led by BEENEXT and Digital Garage, along with other investors like BEENOS, Qualgro and Mamoru Taniya (of Asuka Holdings). Its existing investor SAIF Partners also participated in the round.