Online real estate portal, IndiaProperty was recently demerged as a separate entity from its parent company, Consim Info, which operates BharatMatrimony, CommunityMatrimony, EliteMatrimony, among others. IndiaProperty claims to have over 4,50,000 listings and around 3 million users, and competes with 99Acres (Info Edge), MagicBricks (The Times of India Group*) and Makaan.com (from People Interactive/Shaadi.com). Ganesh Vasudevan, CEO of IndiaProperty, spoke with MediaNama about reasons for the demerger, post demerger plans, funding, partnerships, challenges, competition, among other things: Why The Demerger Medianama: Why you decide to make IndiaProperty, a separate business entity? How do you see IndiaProperty evolving as a company after this separation? Vasudevan: We feel that the online real estate industry has great business opportunity since the business is moving from print classified ads to online. This shift has already happened in the jobs and matrimonial industries. Our demerger gives us the opportunity to give dedicated focus to the real estate business. If we were a part of Consim, there may be competing interest in terms of resource allocations etc. Demeger also gives us the capability to get funding, dedicated resources etc. Besides, the real estate industry is also mature. However, it requires investment to make use of the opportunity and grow, so through the demerger we will also be to attract investment to drive the growth Medianama: Why did you decide to separate now and not 3 years ago? Vasudevan: 3 years ago, the real estate market had not shifted online to a great extend and also the attractiveness of this…
