Members of PropertyGuru’s leadership, together with investors from KKR, share a toast to celebrate the new partnership.
Global investment firm KKR is investing about S$200 million into PropertyGuru through a Series D round of funding, said Asia’s leading property technology group on Wednesday (31 Oct).
With this round of funding, KKR joins an impressive investor list that includes TPG, Emtek and Square Peg Capital.
“This new investment is a great validation of the technology-driven growth that PropertyGuru has delivered. Backed by a decade of market leadership in Southeast Asia and delivering a record year for business performance – today the group is profitable, cash flow positive and has revenues growing more than 25 percent year-on-year,” said Hari V. Krishnan, CEO at PropertyGuru Group.
Ashish Shastry, Member & Head of Southeast Asia at KKR, added: “With rapid online migration well underway across many industries, the PropertyGuru team, led by Hari V. Krishnan, has clearly established itself as the Southeast Asian champion in the online property space. We look forward to partnering with them to help take them to the next level.”
Other regional technology investments by KKR include Indonesian ride-hailing platform Go-Jek and Voyager Innovations in the Philippines.
Ganen Sarvanathan, Chairman of the PropertyGuru Group Board and Co-Managing Partner of TPG Capital Asia, said: “We welcome KKR as an investor and representatives on the board and look forward to working with them to accelerate PropertyGuru’s growth across the region.”
On Wednesday, PropertyGuru also announced the full consolidation of Vietnam’s number one property portal Batdongsan.com.vn into the Group. The property portal attracts over four million users generating over 70 million page views each month.
Batdongsan.com.vn joins PropertyGuru’s market leading businesses across the region – PropertyGuru in Singapore and Malaysia, DDproperty in Thailand, and Rumah.com in Indonesia. With this, the Group enjoys 55 percent market share across Southeast Asia and is the preferred property portal brand.
“Batdongsan and PropertyGuru Group have had a long-standing partnership and we are very pleased to cement that today as PropertyGuru invests further in the business,” said Batdongsan Founder and Managing Director Lê Xuân Trường.
Said Krishnan: “We first invested in Batdongsan in 2016 and have been impressed with their very strong market leadership fuelled by delivering great value to the Vietnamese property sector. Today, we reinforce our commitment to Vietnam with the consolidation of Batdongsan. We look forward to making our regional expertise fully available to Vietnamese property seekers as well as to help the country’s real estate industry benefit from ASEAN integration.”
These newest announcements come just months after PropertyGuru unveiled a successful brand refresh with revamped websites and mobile apps that are powered by Artificial Intelligence – an industry first in Southeast Asia.
Romesh Navaratnarajah, Senior Editor at PropertyGuru, wrote this story. To contact him about this or other stories, email romesh@propertyguru.com.sg
