Realty Startup PropReturns Raises Funds, From Cred's Kunal Shah, Others

Proptech startup PropReturns, which is a marketplace for real estate investment, on Tuesday said it has raised funds from investors, including Cred's Kunal Shah. However, it did not disclose the amount. The company, which was founded by BITS Pilani graduates Kenish Shah, Jayant Panwar, and Somil Mathur in 2021, has raised "an undisclosed amount of funding via a strategic round from the leading angel investors.

" The funding round saw participation from Cred's Kunal Shah, Gokul Rajaram (Board Member - CoinBase and Pinterest), 1947 Rise, Varun Alagh (co-founder of Mamaearth), Sandeep Agarwal (co-founder of ShopClues and Droom), Nitin Jain (Of-Business) and Karan Virwani among others, a company statement said. PropReturns will utilise funds to scale rapidly by adding more asset classes. It will also target to increasing the investor base and partnering with more channel partners/real estate brokers, developers and property owners.

The company, which has presence in Mumbai and Delhi-NCR, is looking to expand in Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. PropReturns also seeks to expand its technology team to provide deeper analytics and market trends for investors to make data-backed investment decisions. "In just one year of operation, PropReturns has conducted transactions worth more than Rs 100 crore through the platform. Our execution and vision for PropReturns has helped us onboard leading angel investors, founders and real estate veterans in this strategic round, all of whom align with our business," said Panwar.

Within months of inception, PropReturns Real Estate Technology Pvt Ltd raised USD 1.2 million funding from Y combinator, Soma Capital and Goodwater capital and a range of strategic angel investors, the statement said. Real estate developers and consultants have noted that adoption of technologies, have increased manifold in Indian real estate after the outbreak of COVID pandemic in April 2020. As a result, investments in proptechs, too, have increased. According to Housing.com's report, India's proptech sector has attracted over USD 551 million in 2020, surpassing investments of USD 549 million in 2019.

In the last two years, the major deals in proptech space include Bengaluru-based NoBroker.com raising USD 210 million from investors at USD 1 billion valuation to become the first unicorn in proptech sector. Australia-based REA Group Ltd and US-based News Corp, in October 2020, fully acquired Elara Technologies, which owns three leading realty portals -- Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger.com. Last month, Bengaluru-based PropShare raised USD 47 million.

Kerala-based BuildNext has raised USD 3.5 million, while Settlin, which is into brokerage for resale homes, raised USD 1 million. In May this year, HDFC acquired 7.2 per cent stake in Loyalie IT Solutions Pvt Ltd (now Reloy) for Rs 1.1 crore. Xanadu Realty, which helps builders in design, marketing, and sales of properties, received strategic investment from HDFC and HDFC Life Insurance Co Ltd.

(PTI)