Square Yards, an online to offline real estate transaction platform, has today announced that it has raised $10 million funding in a new round from high net-worth individuals, Andre Hoffman, and family office of Lohia Group.
The funding raised in the current round includes both — equity and debt. More than 70% of the invested amount is in the form of convertible notes issued for a fixed term at a predetermined coupon rate. So, when the company raises next funding round, investors have an option to covert their debt portion into equity.
Just a couple of month ago, in November 2016, Square Yards had raised around $12 million from Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group. However, Reliance Group did not participate in this round. Taking the amount raised in the current round into account, the company has so far raised over $33 million.
With new funding coming in, the company is looking forward to accelerate its plan to expand its business into newer geographies, globally. The company is also building a capital war chest to aggressively grow its business this year.
Square Yards will also employ a large chunk of the capital in two new verticals – Square Connect, a broker aggregation platform, and Square Care, a property management service for its NRI clientele.
Commenting on the investment, Amit Lohia, director at Lohia Group, said,
The challenge for Square Yards is the manpower-intensive nature of real estate brokerage. But I am very impressed by their approach to residential realty brokerage.
Founded in 2013 by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori, Square Yards is a technology-enabled transaction and aggregation platform for global real estate. It claims to be the largest distributor for primary residential real estate in India, and has a leadership position in the NRI markets.
Through its various verticals, the real estate aggregator platform has a significant presence in Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Australia, West Asia besides India and other countries.
The company claims to clock $2025 million in revenues annually with a gross transaction value of $600 million through the year. It is now targeting to cross the $1-billion mark in gross transaction value by 2017 end. It also hopes to achieve profitability on cash flow side by October 2017.
