Gurgaon-based Kuotient Realty Pvt Ltd, which runs real estate content portal PropStory, has raised an undisclosed sum of money in angel funding, a co-founder of the startup told VCCircle.
Abhishek Bhatewara, a member of angel investor platform Mumbai Angels; Vivek Shah, head of investment banking at Chinese securities and brokerage major Haitong Securities; Suraj Saharan, co-founder of logistics startup Delhivery; Paras Arora, co-founder of Tea Halt, a tea-based restaurant chain; and a few other angels participated in the round.
PropStory will use the funds to recruit full-time content writers, for business development, product development, and to introduce new services, including "India's first real estate-focused business process outsourcing unit," Ashish Mahajan, co-founder of the venture, said.
Launched in July 2015 by IIT Bombay alumni Mahajan and Bhagwandas Paliwal, PropStory is a content platform for the real estate industry. Prior to founding the startup, Mahajan worked in the real estate investments division at private sector lender IDFC in Mumbai, while Paliwal is a former Yahoo executive.
Earlier known as Indian Realty Bytes, PropStory’s portal hosts information and reviews about various real estate projects in different cities. The revenue model of the startup is two-pronged—one from sponsored content and the other is through digital marketing campaigns run for their clients.
“We started running sponsored features which underwent close scrutiny in terms of right information being hosted online, an area of concern with classifieds. Further, as a firm, we restricted ourselves to top-notch firms as clients - TATA Housing, Shapoorji Pallonji, Godrej, Puravankara, Sobha and several local leaders,†said Mahajan.
In 2016-17, PropStory’s revenues stood at around Rs 34 lakh, said Mahajan, and he expects to clock around Rs 1.5- 2 crore in 2017-18.
A wide array of startups offers digital content, from health and education to news and entertainment. Some firms that have recently received investment include medical content startup myUpchar, which in September this year secured Rs 2 crore ($300,000) in seed funding from a group of angel investors.
In the same month, content marketing platform WittyFeed secured pre-Series A funding from Anand Chandrasekaran, former product head at Snapdeal, Apurva Chamaria, head of corporate marketing at HCL Technologies, and Ritesh Malik, co-founder at co-working space Innov8.
In August, ed-tech startup Cerebroz Edutree LLP, which manufactures a device with customised educational content, raised Rs 4.7 crore (about $734,000) in seed funding from Dubai-based high net worth individuals.
In April, healthcare content platform Sepalika raised $750,000 (Rs 4.8 crore) in seed funding led by venture capital firm Accel Partners.