Online classified listings platform Quikr has begin talks to acquire Housing.com, the India-based online property listings portal backed by telecommunications firm SoftBank and wireless technology company Qualcomm, VCCircle reported yesterday.
Rahul Yadav, CEO of Housing.com, confirmed the news, originally gained from undisclosed people familiar with the development, by email but later retracted the statement through another email.
Founded in 2012, Housing.com runs an online real estate listings platform that incorporates its own map-based algorithm.
SoftBank reportedly owns around 30% of the company after leading a $90m round in December 2014 that valued it at $270m and which also included Qualcomm Ventures, which acts as Qualcomm’s corporate venturing unit, Falcon Edge, DST Global, Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners.
Housing.com has raised $121m in total, including $19m in a June 2014 round backed by Qualcomm, Nexus and Helion.
The prospective sale appears to have been initiated by the company’s investors rather than its founders, who were reportedly not told of their intentions, following a series of high-profile missteps by Yadav.
The CEO, who is also being sued by media company Times Group over disparaging comments, has resigned twice from Housing.com, most recently last week in the form of a letter in which he branded its investors “intellectually incapable,” leading the company to finally fire him earlier today.
Quikr would absorb Housing.com into QuikrHomes, its newly launched real estate sales subsidiary.