Housing has gone through a series of tough bouts since the removal of its so-called visionary CEO Rahul Yadav, but it has still managed to snag funds to survive — until now. As rumors suggest, the online real-estate platform is hanging by a thread and has only a sufficient cash to function only a few more months.
But, the present CEO Jason Kothari isn’t giving up on the company and is looking forward to raise fresh funds. The company has been active in the market and approached a few strategic investors to raise more money. Kothari in conversation with Business Standard says that,
We are looking to raise capital in a few months…We are stable… and it isn’t an urgent need.
But, is it…stable? If you take a look at the developments of Housing.com in the past year, then you’ll realise that it has spent more time at sea than at dock.
In the beginning of 2016, the company restructured its stance and stepped away from the home rental business. Once Kothari took over as CEO, he knew that Housing needed a change in business model to expand and stay relevant. So, the company has since then been laser focused on solving the pain points in home buying and selling, the largest real estate segment.
This huge business model change was accompanied by two important and staggering changes: one Housing had raised another $15 million from its biggest investor — SoftBank and the other being that the company had to lay-off over 400 personnel as a cost cutting strategy. During this consolidation period, there were also rumors that SoftBank was pushing Snapdeal to acquire the then struggling Housing.com.
Now that the company had rationalised its business model and had the right amount of resources, it started focusing on selling apartments from day one. Six months later, Housing now has over 11,000 developers and 18,000 active brokers on its platform — among which a large number remains to be monetized. However, it is now completing transactions worth 1.2 crore to 1.5 crore per month. But this is nothing compared to the burn rate of the company, which is as high as 10 crore per month.
And now it looks like that Housing is finally focusing on real issues, like strengthening the team, undertaking acquisitions, and, of course, refining the revenue model. The company has set sight on touching over $10 million in revenues this fiscal year. Kothari added that the company will not measure its revenue in gross merchandise value(GMV) and that it is on track to touch the mark. He also exclaimed that the platform will attain profitable in the coming 18 months.
