Square Yards
Square Yards is a Real Estate advisory firm which owns and operates the real estate aggregation and transaction portal squareyards.com and Square Connect mobile app for property brokers. The company claims to be the #1 pan-India distributor by revenues for primary residential real estate in India, and virtual monopoly in key NRI markets. It aggregates 6000 realty projects of around 500 developers and builders and distributes around 27000 different configurations of homes. It also has a network of 15000 brokers in 14 cities in India and Middle East.
The company has presence in 7 countries including India, UAE, Qatar, Singapore, UK, Hong Kong and Australia. and 20 cities. It's customers are serviced by Portfolio Managers and Relationship Managers (like private banking) with Property purchase Documentation, Home Loan/Mortgage Support, Taxation & Legal services, Portfolio management and restructuring etc.
Squareyards raised $6 million in pre-Series A funding from a clutch of investors based in Singapore and Hong Kong in May 2015. The company was valued by the investors in the range of $40–50 million. With the funding received, the company is scaling-up its operations across multiple distribution platforms including e-commerce and mobile.
History
Square Yards was founded in 2013 by Tanuj Shori, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management- Lucknow, who was the Executive Director at Nomura International, and his wife Kanika Gupta in Hong Kong. It is headquartered at Gurgaon, India.
Square Yards was awarded 'Corporate Real Estate Marketing Company 2014' by Accommodation Times, 'Realtor Of The Year 2014' by Realty PLUS 'Real Estate Startup Of The Year 2014' by Silicon India, 'Young Achiever Of The Year 2014' by Franchise India and 'Company Of The Year 2015' by Silicon India.
Company
Location and revenue
Square Yards has its Indian offices in Gurgaon, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, Pune and other offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar, Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Sydney. It has sourcing tie-ups in Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Thailand, USA, Saudi Arabia and Netherlands.
Square Yards' primary source of revenue is sales commissions and marketing fees from builders. The company recently crossed INR 100 Crores (USD 16 Million) in revenues since inception. It recently witnessed over 87% growth in revenue for the first half of the fiscal year of 2016 and plans to hire 500 more people in next one year.
Growth
In June 2015, the company announced plans of international expansion in countries such as Oman, Qatar, Australia, South Africa and Canada aiming to grab a 15% share of India’s primary residential real estate market by the end of 2017.
Square Yards has facilitated real estate investments to the tune of USD 400 million Gross Market Value (GMV) for around 3500 clients. The company claims to be tapping around 100000 NRIs & PIOs each month in key international markets to get 40% of its business revenues from outside India.
On 5 July 2015, Square Yards sold 350 units of real estate worth $40M via its e-commerce portal SCAPES in under 24 hours.
Mergers & Acquisitions
In June 2015, Square Yards announced its merger with www.realizing.in, a tech platform for online real estate search & discovery.The entire team of Realizing.in joined Square Yards, with its founders, Vivek Agarwal and Hitesh Singla, joining Square Yards executive committee as Partners. realizing.in portal was rechristened as squareyards.com and the group intends to build research and knowledge capital capabilities under Realizing brand to ultimately evolve it into a Big Data Analytics platform for global real estate.
This merger has created strong intellectual property and brought in some unique innovations in real estate portals like interactive city heat-maps, carpet area & built-up area calculations, need based recommendation engine, price to size scatter plots and property decision drivers - connectivity, livability, lifestyle, readiness, & value for money for a project or location based on automated & unbiased algorithms.
In the same month, Squareyards acquired a Singapore-based luxury property advisory firm LUXE Real Estate. This acquisition enabled Squareyards to have direct access into the prime district areas of Singapore real estate market and catapult it into the top 30 agencies by number of agents. The deal is part of the company’s strategy to expand and strengthen its presence in international markets.
In October 2015, Squareyards announced the acquisition of Oryden Tech Labs, Ahmedabad-based creative and design studio specialising in 3D architectural designs, process visualisation, digital walk-throughs and virtual reality. As part of the acquisition, the entire team of Oryden, founded in 2012 by IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus Keyur Bhalavat and design specialist Ravi Patel, joined Square Yards. Bringing in Oryden under the Square Yards umbrella will help enhance company's design and innovation bandwidth.
Products
Square Yards has expanded beyond its real estate advisory services to a unique hybrid model of on ground fulfilment coupled with online convenience to serve home buyers.
E-commerce engine- SCAPESTM
SCAPESTM is a next generation platform for online real estate purchase a few notches above the existing platforms in this category - because of its ability to provide visualization through augmented 3D reality, virtual reality etc. apart from real time inventory selection and booking through secured payment gateway.
Square Connect
Square Connect is a productivity boosting mobile app for Real Estate brokers that offers access to the best selling and top commission paying projects across the Globe. It has other features for client management, tracking payments and accruals, news and updates, loan EMI calculators etc. to make the working life of a real estate broker simpler. The app is available for free download on Google Play.>