To flag off the new year, PropTiger announced that it would officially extend its partnership with Housing.com by merging it into their own business. This all-cash transaction is now leading up to the creation of one of the largest offline-to-online real estate behemoths in India. It is self-evident due to the strategic restructuring process, which involves handing out pink slips to nearly 200 employees.
The NewsCorp-backed company in control of the combined entity has announced a restructuring exercise to align themselves to their long-term business objective. This has been done to ensure “optimal utilisation” of resources while creating what could soon become the largest housing platform.
But, the said exercise has also taken its toll on redundant team operations within the two recently merged organisations. PropTiger has now shown the door to nearly 200 support employees to streamline operations and avoid extra capital expenditures. Talking about this massive layoff exercise, PropTiger CEO Dhruv Agarwal says,
We have made a restructuring exercise to integrate the operations of the two companies. Our headcount has come down by about 200 people from overlapping support functions of the two organisations.
This restructuring will ensure optimal utilisation of resources and leveraging of synergies across the merged entity.
Additionally, the combined entity is being restructured and divided into two strategic business units — platform and transaction businesses. This entity will be spearheaded by Agarwala as the chief executive officer along with support from a team of senior executives. The two said units have now gained their own individual operation heads, other positions still remain unchanged. Also, for those unaware, Housing.com CEO Jason Kotharti has departed the company and accepted an offer from Snapdeal.
Here, the first company unit i.e platform business will be lead by Mani Rangarajan, who takes on the new role of chief business officer. This unit comprises of all developer and broker facing marketing solutions, visualisation products, consulting and data labs. The transaction unit comprises of primary company operations alongside resale and home loans operations. It has been handed over to Sunil Mishra, who will be the new chief strategy officer of the PropTiger’s combined entity.
Further, reiterating his ambitious vision for the company in the online real-estate sector, Agarwala continues to add,
Our vision is to help consumers find their dream home in a transparent and simple way. Strategic restructuring leads to sharper business focus that will take us a step closer to realising that vision.
Elara Technologies Pte, the company which owns major real-estate entities like Housing.com, PropTiger.com and Makaan.com, is now out there to take control of the booming real-estate sector. In addition to the merger, the joint entity has also received fresh investment of close to $55 million from NewsCorp-backed REA Group, Australia’s leading digital real-estate player. He has onboarded the company to join the likes of marquee investors SoftBank, SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.
