Softbank Group-backed Housing.com is now scouting for buys in an attempt to build capabilities. The Mumbai-headquartered firm intends to close acquisitions, strategic buys of companies or assets in the next 12 months.

“We are looking at acquiring companies actively. Our vision is to be a full-stack, end-to-end firm, and we are also looking at strategic acquisitions like we did in the past,” Housing.com Chief Executive Officer Jason Kothari told BusinessLine . This is contrary to earlier reports that the real estate website is on the block.

The four pillars to being an end-to-end firm are search and discovery, exploration and engagement, transaction facilitation (site visits and coupons) and transaction fulfilment (closing the transaction and collecting the brokerage), he said.

“We don’t have a presence in the last two categories, so we are either going to build that or buy that,” he said, adding that there are a number of organised brokerages with these capabilities in the country.

Building of capabilities through acquisitions is nothing new for Housing.com, which has made many acquisitions in the recent past.

In March 2015, it acquired realty-focused online community Indian Real Estate Forum for an undisclosed sum, followed by Realty Business Intelligence, a company focused on risk assessment for realty projects, for ₹10 crore in June 2015. Later in August, it bought HomeBuy36, a sales lifecycle management platform that connects developers, agents and buyers, for $2 million.

“Almost every company in this space wanting to work with us has approached us. So we are looking at potentially buying one of those companies or building those capabilities in the next 12 months. We don’t have a fixed criteria (on the corpus); we are open and flexible.”

Fund raising

The company, which has raised $140 million till date, is also looking for further fund-raising.

“The capital we require going forward is relatively small compared with that amount. We are evaluating our options, even as we intend to raise the next funding in a few months,” Kothari said without specifying the amount the company intends to raise.

The firm might also opt for a US listing. “We see ourselves going public, perhaps in the US, but this is really a long-term plan. It is still too early to discuss this in a lot of specifics.”

On reports that the company is on the block, he said that almost every company in the real estate space has approached to work with it and added: “Housing is definitely not up for sale.”

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