Singapore, 23 January 2013 – PropertyGuru Group, Asia’s leading property media, announced double revenue growth year-on-year in all core markets with strong emphasis placed on building the Company’s brand while extending its market leadership position in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia and the closing of the gap with competitors in Malaysia.
These highlights include:
- 50% increase in real estate agent subscribers to reach over 24,000 generating close to an additional 500,000 residential and commercial properties listings
- 95% rise in web visitors to almost 10 million regionally viewing 83 million property pages
- PropertyGuru’s mobile apps garnered almost 500,000 downloads, equating to roughly 1,275 people downloading an app to make 900 enquiries to advertisers who in turn uploaded 600 property listings every day in 2013
- Clinched 3 more real estate industry awards – Overseas Property Professional (OPP) Awards for Best Innovation – Gold, Best Media - Silver and Best Online Service - Bronze
- PropertyGuru firmly established Events as a new line of business with 15 property shows held across 4 countries, showcasing Malaysian, Thai, Philippines, Indonesian, Singaporean, UK and Australian properties - with over 200 properties sold and almost 15,000 attendees
- The PropertyGuru (TPG) newspaper capped off its first year of operations in Singapore by being named Marketing Magazine’s Top Ten Newspaper for Marketers and remaining as the first and only dedicated property newspaper in Singapore with 175,000 print copies distributed across 3,500 locations per fortnight and a growing readership of 50,000 online readers
- GuruCares, PropertyGuru’s annual outreach community programme, organized “Gift Life”, a regional blood donation drive held in conjunction with the Singapore Red Cross Society across 4 countries with 250 people donating blood, which in turn will helped the lives of up to 750 people
Fuelling progress with strategic investments Among one of the key highlights of 2012 was the double-digit Singapore Dollar investment inked with ImmobilienScout24, Europe’s top property portal group and subsidiary of global company Deutsche Telekom. The investment is reputed to be one of Asia’s largest online deals for 2012 and serves as a huge endorsement of the future for online property portals.
The deal also reinforced the Group’s vision of expanding its online property portal share in the region as well as gave access to additional talent and expert resources to boost engineering, quality analysis, product development as well as online and trade marketing.
Firmly establishing brand presence in Singapore2012 marked the integrated marketing campaign launch for
PropertyGuru.com.sg, PropertyGuru’s Singapore-based portal, which includes broadcast and outdoor media to raise product and service awareness across the island to highlight the online portal’s competitive strengths. The campaign “Most Property Choices. One Simple Search” reflected and promoted the Company’s compelling proposition and extended the campaign’s effectiveness beyond branding, generating more than an estimated 300,000 monthly leads for advertisers.
There was an increase of 83% in traffic to PropertyGuru.com.sg compared to 2011 to reach over 57.6 million visitors, affirming its dominant position as the Singapore No.1 property online portal for property hunters with a high brand recall of nine times more market share in contrast to all other competitors (Source: Google Brand Query Index).
With more investors attracted to commercial property in 2012,
www.CommercialGuru.com.sg, Singapore's leading commercial property portal, experienced a 50% increase in visitorship with double the number of listings at almost 33,000 in comparison to 2011. To date, CommercialGuru is used by more than 200,000 business users viewing 2.4 million pages monthly.
Additionally, the company's
www.LoanGuru.com.sg, Singapore's leading independent mortgage broker representing 23 banks, closed the year with almost S$60 million worth of home loan approvals processed monthly.
Steve Melhuish, Group CEO of PropertyGuru Group said, “2012 was an amazing year for PropertyGuru with performance completely exceeding expectations in all countries. I would like to extend a big thank you to our employees, customers and partners for the great support and commitment they’ve shown and I'm sure 2013 will be another exciting year. We’ll continue to create innovation services, our brand and improve the experience for our property searchers and advertiser clients."
ENDS
BIOGRAPHIESPropertyGuruHeadquartered in Singapore,
PropertyGuru was co-founded in 2006 as a self-funded company, with a vision to make the property search process a breeze for buyers, sellers and investors. Taking advantage of Asia’s growing affluence for property and the online boom, it received its first VC investment funding in 2008. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, reaping profits and positive cashflow in 2009 and doubling revenue growth in 2011.
PropertyGuru is now Asia’s leading online property portal group, with a high-volume of online real estate presence across nine territories in Asia, including offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and partnerships with leading property websites in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam and China. It has a current inventory of electronic-driven properties including 83 million property pages with 500,000 residential and commercial properties listings from 200 developers to attract 9.8 million buyers and 24,000 paying real estate agent subscribers and developer advertisers, generating close to 300,000 advertiser enquiries monthly.
To date, PropertyGuru has also created 12 mobile applications in 4 countries and 3 languages which garnered 490,000 mobile application downloads, is the first to integrate website with social media as well as circulate Singapore’s only dedicated property print publication with dispersion outreach of over 3,500 key locations island-wide.
Steve Melhuish, Co-Founder and Chief Executive OfficerSteve is an award-winning entrepreneur.
For the last two decades, Steve built profitable companies throughout Asia and Europe and in 2006 along with his partner Jani Rautiainen, founded PropertyGuru Group.
Under the auspices of this newly established holding group, PropertyGuru.com.sg was started with the aim of providing a one-stop online shop for the listing and sale of residential properties to individual and institutional home buyers and investors respectively.
Prior to Steve’s current role, he held executive positions in various venture capital firms including Skype, AOL, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Extreme Media, iPass and Ariadne Capital. In all, Steve’s expertise in leading global teams resulted in a US$500 million turnover for a business unit for Cable & Wireless. In 2007, Steve was awarded the Spirit of Enterprise Award, in recognition of his contributions to entrepreneurship in Singapore.
Steve is a non-executive director for two other firms, an angel investor and member of the Business Angels Network South East Asia.
For more queries or to arrange for an interview, contact:
Katrina Karim
Mobile (+65) 9844 6618
Email
katrina@thepublicrelationscompany.com