Jane DoeSquare Yards was founded in October 2013 after Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta found a gap in the real estate segment. It was during 2010 when they came across a number of NRIs who wanted to invest in Indian real estate but couldn’t do so because of lack of systematic procedure. The husband-wife duo, working at senior management levels in investment banking and wealth management fields respectively, decided to do something to make things easy and hassle-free for them.
Initially, they conducted an in-depth research on the real estate markets of a few major Indian cities and presented it to NRIs. A positive response motivated them to help more such investors and thus Square Yards was founded.
Bootstrapping
Initially, Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta didn’t rely on external funding for Square Yards. They bootstrapped the company and expanded it to five countries, including India, UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, London and Abu Dhabi over the next one and a half years. Square Yards covered fifteen Indian cities at first to ensure a host of quality real estate options for NRIs.
Some of the innovative ideas of Square Yards like mall redevelopment projects in Canada, student accommodation in Liverpool and car parks in Glasgow helped it expand across geographies.
First Year of Square yards
The company started witnessing success right from the first year. Within the first 12 months of operations, it facilitated real estate transactions worth $250 million GMV in India and $50 million GMV in global markets. Needless to say, it bagged ‘Startup of the Year’ award by Silicon India and ‘Real- Estate Marketing Company’ award by Accommodation Times within first six months of operations.
What They Offer
Square Yards has established good working relationships with over 500 premium developers offering blue chip projects globally. The prime objective of the company is to offer end-to-end support to its customers throughout the life cycle of property buying. Their services vary from property identification, site visits, transaction support, financial aid and portfolio management.
The company assigns each customer a dedicated relationship manager who takes care of all the hassled tasks throughout the asset ownership. While other companies tend to have property centered approach, Square Yards focuses on customers and seeks to live up to their expectations in every possible way. Its financial arm Square Capital brings financial ownership, transparency and knowledge capital in all the mortgage decision with regard to assets.
Square Yards has also launched Square Connect recently, which is a mobile-based platform for all the independent financial agents, real estate brokers and broking firms. They all can access Square Yard’s real estate inventory and choose perfect options for their clients in a simplified way.
In short, Square Yard intends to become the largest real estate service provider in India and other global markets in the course of the time. It aims to make premium property buying procedure as simple as purchasing any household item on e-commerce websites.
Funding
In May 2015, Square Yards announced that it had received $6 million from a host of HNI investors belonging to Hong Kong and Singapore in pre-Series A funding.
Acquisitions
With the help of the funds that it received in pre-Series A round, Square Yards acquired Gurgaon-based Realizing.in, a young tech platform offering services in online search and discovery for $5 million in June and Singapore-based LUXE Real Estate thereafter.
Present Position
With over 800 employees across 21 cities of six countries, Square Yards has sold properties worth $450 million to more than 3500 happy and satisfied customers. It generated Rs. 38 crores in revenues within the first year of operations and has been growing ever since.
Future Plans
It looks forward to adjoining hands with one lakh brokers and 100+ institutional bodies in FY16, which can further help it to cater 15% stake in the primary residential market of India by the end of 2017.
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