Property brokerage firm Square Yards, which is backed by Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, has acquired Mumbai-based rental platform Azuro as part of its expansion plan.
Founded in 2016 by IIT Bombay alumni Altaf Ahmad, Sushant Kumar, Sudhanshu Mishra, Ayush Agrawal and Vishal Chauthmal, Azuro offers rental and property management solutions. It helps in finding a tenant, background checks, automated rent collection, property maintenance and tenant exits.
The entire team of Azuro, including its co-founders, has joined Square Yards and will continue to operate under the larger umbrella with the same brand name.
Square Yards founder and CEO Tanuj Shori said, “Square Yards is building an integrated intermediary ecosystem for the real estate industry and this requires the best of technology and talent. Azuro’s innovative approach in grabbing market share in the large rentals and property management sector gives us opportunity to add synergies to the current value chain.”
“Both rentals and property management are multi-billion opportunities, but currently under-served in India. We will look forward to scaling this business in India and further globally in countries like UAE, Canada and Australia where we have a significant presence,” he added.
Azuro co-founder Ahmad said, the company aims to catalyse the next phase of growth by leveraging Square Yards’ platform using its reach, operational resources, and the consumer platform squareyards.com.
Azuro has been backed by Kae Capital, Mumbai Angels, White Unicorn ventures, who will now join the cap table of Square Yards after the acquisition.
Gaurav Chaturvedi, Partner at Kae Capital, said the unification is aimed at capturing a big opportunity in the O2O (offline to online) real estate services market.
In India, about USD 32 billion (about Rs 2.27 lakh crore) of rent transactions take place annually and the brokerage opportunity of USD 3 billion (about Rs 21,300 crore) is expected to grow further as more consumers are inclining towards shared economy from asset ownership models.
With the impending roll out of the Model Tenancy Act, 2019, Square Yards said there are bright chances for the rental housing market to not only get regulated but also ripe for disruption through the use of technology.
In September, Square Yards raised USD 25 million (around Rs 175 crore) through preferential issue of equity shares to investors, including Times Group.
The company has so far raised USD 50 million in equity and over USD 25 million in debt financing since its inception in 2014.
Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group’s private equity arm had invested USD 12 million in Square Yards in November 2016.
The Gurugram-based company had clocked a revenue of Rs 220 crore in the 2018-19 financial year. It reported a 56 per cent growth in revenue at Rs 75.5 crore for the second quarter of this fiscal.