The IPGA Group (iProperty), a company listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), has made its debut in the Indian market by acquiring Horizon Infoventures, which owns the Indian property portal RealAcres. The acquisition has been made through its wholly owned subsidiary iProperty Group Asia Pte Ltd. iProperty will introduce print, exhibition and online luxury products to the Indian market.
Further details include that iProperty will invest A$ 0.53 Million (around $470,000) in 4 tranches for 43 percent shares, and swap shares for 17 percent. They will have the option to acquire the remaining 40 percent based on future earnings. The management of RealAcres have a lock-in for a minimum of 3 years.
The deal appears on the same lines as to iProperty's July 2008 acquisition of VRHouse.com.tw in Taiwan. RealAcres claims that it has around 211,000 property listings. The company is based in Mumbai, and focuses primarily on the Western India market. Considered that many times real estate agents are offered free listings to get them to sign up for property sites, so the number of listings may not be an indication of paid listings, hence revenue figures might vary.
In the online property space, if one looks at the transaction or listings based models, then the most prominent players are MagicBricks (Times Business), 99Acres (Info Edge), Indiaproperty (Consim) and Makaan.com while in the business networking space, its only propertymixer.com. HT Media and Manorama Online are also planning real estate portals.
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