Bangalore based online classified site, Quikr India Pvt., Ltd., has decided to buy real estate brokerage company, HDFC Realty Ltd., and HDFC Developers Ltd., in an all stocks exchange move. These stocks are going to be valued at a total net worth of Rs. 357 crores ($56 million.)
The merger will result in the target company’s parent, mortgage lender HDFC Ltd., taking a stake in Quikr, the two companies said on Thursday. The size of the stakes has not been disclosed yet. HDFC Ltd., operates the brokerage business, while HDFC Developers owns the HDFC Red Platform. This platform deals with online real estate.
This would be the second biggest acquisition by Quikr in the field of online real estate. The first was when it acquired Tiger Global Management backed real estate platform Commonfloor for $120 million in January 2016. Since its inception, Quikr has raised around $ 346 million from investors like Warbug Pincus, Kinnevik AB, Tiger Global, Steadview Capital Management and Matrix Partners India.
Through the years, Quikr has added a lot of verticles to its company like real estate, automobiles and online recruitment. This was done by Quikr acquiring a lot of small companies such as Salosa, Stayglad and ZapLuk in the home services segment, Commonfloor and Grabhouse in the real estate segment, Hiree in the recruitment segment and Stepni in the automobile services segment.
Quikr is one of the leading companies in India and has a market capital valuation of around $ 1.5 billion. Quikr competes with OLX, Naspers backed online classified segment. In June, Quikr had acquired blue collar jobs listing company Babajob Services Pvt., Ltd., in a mostly stock deal. Babajob was its 11th acquisition in all and second in the hiring segment. It had earlier acquired Hiree in a similar deal.
“We see great synergies between Quikr and HDFC as we start working together to bring a seamless online to offline platform to developers and consumers,” the founder and Chief Executive Officer, Pranay Chulet said.