Announcing its entry into online-to-offline (O2O) home rental space, Singapore-based Elara Technologies, parent firm of Housing, Makaan, and PropTiger, has acquired home rental marketplace Fastfox in a tune of Rs 100 crore.
Through Fastfox acquisition, Softbank-backed Elara plans to provide end-to-end on ground assistance to both landlords and tenants in collaboration with other brokers. The entire staff, 120, of the company, would become part of Elara.
Till date, Elara was offering the listing in the rental market through two of its portals- Housing and Makaan. The company claims to grow at a rate of 60 percent year-on-year. It aims to become a leader in the digital real estate market in India.
This would be Elara’s third acquisition in the space. Earlier, It had acquired Makaan in 2015 and Housing in 2017.
Incepted in November 2014 by Pallav Pandey and Mukul Bhati, FastFox is an online-to-offline (O2O) brokerage firm that works in partnership with other brokers to list residential properties online for rental purposes.
It allows home seekers to check pictures and information about real-time available properties, schedule house visits and finalize with the landlord. After the acquisition, Fastfox plans to expand beyond Gurugram.
Talking about the acquisition, Fastfox CEO Pllav Pandey told PTI that Housing.com’s data, technology and demand generation combined with on ground capabilities of Fastfox will be a perfect recipe for success.
The company had recently announced Open House Model, in which a house is open for viewing by home seekers for a scheduled period of time. Fastfox claimed three-fold growth post this new model adoption.
Its GMV run rate has touched $20 million marks. Home rental platform inventory includes 40 percent of the rentable houses in Gurgaon and is being used by more than 15 percent of all home seekers in the city.
Every month it claims to close to 300 transactions, which was 100 till last year.
Fastfox counts investors such as Lightspeed partners and Blume Venture among its backers. So far, FastFox has raised a total of Rs 4 0 crore in funding. In May last year, it had acquired Roofpik to deepen its reach into neighborhood community.
