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How NoBroker making real estate a broker-free space?

About NoBroker

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NoBroker is the world’s largest online P2P property search portal linking flat owners and tenants directly and offering brokerage-free buy or sell of properties.

The company was founded in 2013 by IIT- Bombay graduate Akhil Gupta and IIT- Kanpur and IIM- Ahmedabad graduate Amit Kumar Agarwal. The company claims to have 650,000+ customers.

Why we chose NoBroker as Startup of the Week?

  • It is ‘Peer-to-Peer’ ecosystem in real estate with 3 lakh user base.
  • It is a property listings site for renting homes and broker-free property search portal.
  • The company offers to hassle free house hunting
  • In last 12 months, their customer base has grown from 35,000 to 650,000.
  • The company has a presence in 4 major cities- Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, and Chennai.
  • It has an Android app with a crowdsourcing feature called ‘click and earn’.
  • The company has seen the monthly traffic of 1.2 million.
  • It has massive 27.1K likes on Facebook, 1,262 followers on Twitter, and 1,152 followers on Instagram.

The Idea

The idea of NoBroker was born in 2013 and website was live in March 2014. Both Amit Agarwal and Akhil Gupta had bad experiences with brokers while searching for houses in Mumbai and Bangalore. They searched for many flats before finding something suitable. They also had to disburse a high brokerage fee – equal to two months’ rent.

Amit and his owner wanted to do renew the lease themselves but the broker interfered and forced a commission equal to 2 months’ rent because he had initiated the deal. These experiences inspired both Amit and Akhil to report this problem and start NoBroker.

About the Founders

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NoBroker was founded by IIT & IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, Amit Kumar Agarwal & Akhil Gupta.

Amit Agarwal, the Co-Founder & CEO of NoBroker, looks after global vision and direction for the company and Akhil Gupta, the Co-Founder & CTO of NoBroker, is techie to the core.

Amit Agrawal has formerly been an analyst at Cognizant Technologies, principal consultant at PwC and associate director at Australia New Zealand Bank while Akhil Gupta an application engineer at Oracle and technical lead at PeopleFluent.

Business & Revenue Model

At present, NoBroker services are entirely free of cost, which is a feature of building a network-effect business. The monetization is very easy in this business since customer is already paying a good amount of fee for the next best service. NoBroker continues to offer customers fresh and large pool of house list and a network of honest owners and tenants.
The company has three revenue models:

  • Freemium model for tenants
  • Freedom plans for INR 999
  • Relax plan for INR1999

Funding

NoBroker has secured $10 million in Series B round of funding led by Singapore-based venture capital firm BEENEXT and Digital Garage along with other investors. The company also raised $3 million in February 2015 from SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Ventures in Series A round of funding.

Future Plans Ahead

NoBroker focuses on enabling owners and tenants to complete the entire transaction without any broker. Recently it launched an online rental agreement feature which can be modified to precise needs of both parties and can be printed for signature and deal closure.

NoBroker, now operational in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and Mumbai, plans to expand its services to over 20 cities in a year.

The current size of the non-brokerage market in India is $6.5 billion. They are trying to cover 70% of the market and turn profitable by the next 18 months.

NoBroker is leading the paradigm change in rentals from B2C to C2C. NoBroker states to be the only non-brokerage marketplace in the country and considers chaotic set of offline brokers as their main competitor.

DSIM Team
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