US-based private equity firm General Atlantic has made a follow-on investment of $30 million (Rs 230 crore) in NoBroker.com as part of the property listings portal’s extended Series D financing round.
“This funding will help us expand to new cities and also go deeper in the existing cities and service more customers. We will also invest further in our sales vertical,” said Saurabh Garg, one of the co-founders of NoBroker.
The startup, operated by NoBroker Technologies Solutions Pvt. Ltd, had launched its operations in Delhi-NCR in November last year. It also operates in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Shantanu Rastogi, managing director at General Atlantic, said NoBroker’s various offerings are “deepening the engagement” of owners, tenants, buyers and community residents with its platform.
NoBroker is a home rental and purchase platform that helps users find homes without paying any brokerage. It was founded in 2013 by Indian Institute of Technology alumni Garg, Amit Kumar Agarwal and Akhil Gupta.
The company claims it has more than 30 lakh properties registered on its platform and that 70 lakh individuals have used its services. It claims to be currently adding more than 350,000 new users every month.
NoBroker had raised $50 million in its Series D round of funding led by Tiger Global Management in October last year. General Atlantic also participated in that round. The PE firm had also led the company’s Series C round of $51 million last year.
Previously, the startup had mopped up $10 million in its Series B round from Beenext, Beenos and other investors in 2016, and secured $3 million from SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Capital in 2015.
The startup operates in a market that has well-funded firms such as Info Edge (India) Ltd’s 99acres, QuikrHomes, MagicBricks and News Corp-backed PropTiger. News Corp also owns the company that publishes VCCircle.
General Atlantic has been operating in India since 1999. It has about a dozen investment professionals in India and focuses on sectors such as financial services, internet and technology, business services, retail, consumer and healthcare.
The follow-on investment in NoBroker is General Atlantic’s third deal in India this year; it had previously invested in ed-tech startups Unacademy and Byju’s.