NoBroker, a peer-to-peer property listing platform, which makes sure that you don’t have to go around with brokers while you hunt for an affordable rent for a property, has grabbed up $3 Million in a Series A round, which saw SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Ventures as the participants
NoBroker had last year received a seed round from Angel investor Saurabh Garg, who is the co-founder of the Four Fountains Spa chain. The startup is primarily looking to use these funds for expansion into other Indian cities, apart from Mumbai and Bengaluru.
So how exactly is NoBroker, different from other online real-estate listing platforms like the SoftBank-backed Housing.com and NewsCorp backed PropTiger ? Well, contrastingly different is how we’ll start with.
While platform like the ones mentioned above and other similar ones involve you, searching for a property on their platform and then deciding about it, NoBroker eliminates the broking process altogether. As the website’s home page mentions, the platform allows you to find out potential flatmates or flats-with-no-broker, thus helping you connect directly with the owner and negotiate for yourself.
But then, Broking has always been the traditional way how Indians go out and purchase/rent a property, primarily because that middle-man takes care of all the legal documentation involved. While it will still take time to convince people to adopt to its model, NoBroker still provides a collection of customized legal document for each rental. And once you get to know the cost-savings involved, you are ought to spread the word and use NoBroker’s platform again to get your rentals done.
So how exactly did the founders, Amit Agarwal and Akhil Gupta, IIT and IIM alumni get this idea to open up a peer-to-peer platform ?
Nobroker was started because all of us believed that paying hefty brokerage can not be the only option to find a new home. As tenants, we have been paying these brokerages year on year without seeing any advantage of the broker. The only reason he existed was that there was a huge information asymmetry in the market.
NoBroker initially started out its operations in Mumbai and Bangalore. Agarwal claims that NoBroker has over 5,000 broker-free properties listed on its portal, which is more than what Housing.com or PropTiger have (if we compare non-broker listings).
With $3 Million more into its pocket, NoBroker is aiming to expand to as many as 20 more Indian cities, however there are n immediate goals as to which city they would prefer to target first.
