Purchasing a property can be a tedious task that largely involves laborious paperwork, ranging from agreements to getting bank loans approved. Even before completing the deal, buyers have to conduct due diligence on the property up for sale. This, too, is time-consuming and complicated. Skipping the diligence, however, could be risky if the seller provides incorrect representation.
It’s worth mentioning here that the Indian government launched a program to digitize land records in 2016. The program, however, is reportedly slow as no state has completed the survey work.
Landeed, a Bangalore-based startup, is trying to solve the problem of determining ownership by offering a Google-like search engine for real estate titles.
Founded in 2022 by Sanjay Mandava, ZJ Lin, and Jonathan Richards, the startup recently raised Rs 19.5 crore in a pre-seed funding round from Clutterbot CEO Justin Hamilton, Goodwater Capital, Olive Tree, Cred founder Kunal Shah, and others.
The subscription-based platform essentially allows owners, agents, legal advisors, and developers to check the real estate records of a property. The startup sources information from government databases.
On Landeed, one can enter required details such as survey number on the platform and instantly get a government-generated Encumbrance Certificate (EC) for a property. The details contain information on the present and past ownership up to 20 to 25 years, Landeed CEO Mandava told Entrackr. One can also look up info such as property tax.
Mandava added that the number of app installs has gone past 750,000 in the last six months, while the subscriber base is in the “thousands.”
Apart from ownership details, Landeed also has a section called ‘legal opinion’, which allows users to get assistance on financial records, pending court cases, and even drafting sale deeds.
Landeed, currently, covers states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and Maharashtra. The company plans to roll out its services to other states soon. Mandava revealed that Landeed will be available outside India as well.
“We are starting with a country in Africa… there’s another country in the pipeline… I am not sure how soon that would happen but probably next quarter,” he said.
India’s real estate space, set to reach a market value of $1 trillion by 2030, presents a huge opportunity to startups. Majority of solutions, however, focus on buying, purchasing or rental of properties. Platforms like Housing.com and No Broker, have already gained popularity in this space. Interestingly, Housing.com and No Broker have also begun offering legal assistance services for home buyers. Landeed, however, may do well by offering a clutter-free experience to potential customers, which include lawyers, brokers, and government officials.
