NoBroker absorbs Society Connect into its community management service

By Narinder Kapur

  • 11 Feb 2020
Credit: Thinkstock

Bengaluru-based NoBroker Technologies Solutions Pvt. Ltd has acquired property operations platform Society Connect for assimilation into its community management service, the real estate startup said in a statement on Tuesday.

Society Connect, run by Mass IT Channel Pvt. Ltd, was founded in 2016 by Sourav Mukerjee, Shobhna Arora and Manish Kumar Gupta. Its platform provides societies with solutions for property maintenance and services including visitor management, staff attendance, e-bills and dues tracking and payment.

NoBroker said the acquisition took place in an all-cash deal, without disclosing the financial details. It also said that it intends to retain all of Society Connect’s employees and aims to combine the platform with its own community management service NoBrokerHood.

NoBroker co-founder and chief technology officer Akhil Gupta said the acquisition would strengthen the company’s service suite.  “Our focus has been to provide end-to-end solutions for all aspects of community management and simplify apartment living,” he said.

Currently, NoBrokerHood has been deployed around 1,000 societies in cities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. Society Connect’s services, meanwhile, are being used by developers including DLF, Unitech, Ashiana Group, Omaxe Group, Nirvana Country and Bestech.

“We look forward to bring our financial competence to NoBrokerHood to digitally transform and streamline activities for a smooth user experience,” Mukerjee said.

NoBroker was set up in 2013 by Gupta, Amit Agarwal and Saurabh Garg, all graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology. The startup focuses on helping users find homes to rent or purchase without paying any brokerage.

In a conversation with VCCircle in December last year, Garg said the company was conducting between 13,000 and 18,000 monthly transactions. “It was actually saving up more than Rs 1,000 crore in brokerage,” he added.

In June last year, the property-technology platform said that it had raised $51 million (around Rs 354 crore) in a Series C funding round led by private equity firm General Atlantic. Existing investors SAIF Partners and Beenext also took part in the round. That year, it also raised Rs 17 crore ($2.4 millIon) in venture debt from Trifecta Capital.

In its previous funding rounds, NoBroker.com had raised $10 million in its Series B funding round from Beenext, Beenos and other investors in 2016 and $3 million from SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Capital in 2015.