Bengaluru-based peer-to-peer property listings startup NoBroker has raised a $3 million Series A round of funding from SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Ventures. The startup will use funds to expand its services to more cities beyond Mumbai and Bangalore.
The startup last year raised an undisclosed seed round from Saurabh Garg, an angel investor who co-founded the Four Fountains Spa chain.
Nobroker is a new home rental platform that makes it easier to find your new home without paying any brokerage by contacting the owners directly. The startup wants to reach 20 cities in India in two years.
Founded by a team of IIT Bombay and IIM Ahmedabad graduates - Amit Agrawal and Akhil Gupta, Nobroker was started because of a belief that paying hefty brokerage can not be the only option to find a new home. As tenants, people in India are paying these brokerages year on year without seeing any advantage of the broker. The only reason he existed was that there was a huge information asymmetry in the market. Nobroker is a platform that removes this information asymmetry and provides a marketplace for free exchange of this information that used to cost 1-2 months of rent as brokerage.
NoBroker also provides users with a template to generate their own customised legal document for each rental. Currently, it has operations in Mumbai and Bangalore. It claims of having 5,000 listed properties in Mumbai alone.
The founders of NoBroker believe that their formula has the potential to work overseas, but, for now, they are focused on the Indian market. They will use the funding to expand the service’s presence. There’s no immediate goal, but Agarwal said he is aiming to reach 20 cities in India in the next two years.
Advertisements