SINGAPORE, 9 July 2015 - PropertyGuru Group ("PropertyGuru" or the "Group"), Asia's leading online property portal group, announced today that it has acquired ePropertyTrack, Southeast Asia's leading new project sales and marketing company, for an undisclosed amount. With this acquisition, the Group aims to expand its services portfolio by offering high-value new project marketing services to real estate developers, marketing agencies and property agents. This deal comes on the back of the recent S$175 million investment in the PropertyGuru; the largest in the technology sector in Southeast Asia this year.
Covering over 90% of active new projects in Singapore, ePropertyTrack essentially helps developers and agencies streamline the sales and marketing process of their new projects by facilitating information-sharing and driving business operations efficiency for all parties. This includes real-time views on project reservations during launch, registration of interest management, inventory management, floorplans/virtual tours/photos/video content management, promotion broadcasting, analytics reporting and sharing of information to marketing agencies and agents. ePropertyTrack's services also support real estate agencies and agents by providing a multi-media interactive sales tool. The tool is accessible on both desktop and mobile and facilitates sales discussions with prospective buyers and bookings of units directly with the developer in real-time.
Steve Melhuish, CEO and co-founder of PropertyGuru, said, "Today, a growing number of top property developers and real estate agencies are using the ePropertyTrack service to market more than 500 new project launches in Southeast Asia. There are immediate synergies to be had from this acquisition, which is in line with our regional agenda to capitalise on the Southeast Asia property market potential, and our push for continued product innovation."
New projects play a key role in Southeast Asia's real estate markets with an estimated S$40 billion of transactions occurring annually1. Historically, real estate developers and marketing agencies have not been able to easily coordinate their new project sales. This has been due to a lack of integrated inventory and marketing analytics. ePropertyTrack's information-sharing platform has solved that as it helps developers and marketing agencies operate as one cohesive unit.
The solution provides sales leads for agents and helps them track and nurture these to prospects. A live booking system helps these agents connect with developers and close sales anytime, anywhere. Analytics and reports facilitate decision-making and enhance operational efficiency for agents, marketing agencies, developers and buyers at each stage.
"We are excited to be a part of PropertyGuru Group. PropertyGuru's market-leading position and expertise in Southeast Asia will accelerate our expansion in the region. This investment, coupled with PropertyGuru's passion for innovation, will empower us to deliver enhanced and cutting-edge products to our users," said Kunal Bagga, Founder, ePropertyTrack.
Post-acquisition, ePropertyTrack teams in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore will be integrated into PropertyGuru's local offices and while both companies will continue to work independently in the near-term, there are plans underway for joint development of products and services and roll-out of new projects regionally.
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Hill+Knowlton Strategies
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1 AC Nielsen and PropertyGuru estimates
About PropertyGuru Group
PropertyGuru Group is Asia's leading online property portal group used by more than 11 million property buyers, viewing over 104 million property pages and generating over 500,000 enquiries for real estate developer and agent advertisers - every month - across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
Headquartered in Singapore, PropertyGuru was founded in 2006 by two entrepreneurs with a vision to simplify the property search process and help buyers, sellers and investors make better property decisions faster. Taking advantage of Asia's growing affluence, property demand and online explosion, PropertyGuru has become market leader in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia.
The Group's continued focus on innovation has been a key enabler to its success. PropertyGuru has developed and launched 15 mobile applications in four countries and three languages. At present, the Group records over 2.5 million downloaded mobile apps. PropertyGuru was also the first to integrate its website with social media and first to launch Singapore's only dedicated property newspaper, read by more than 100,000 readers island-wide every month. PropertyGuru has also developed a property events platform with approximately 20 shows held annually across four countries, addressing 20,000 potential property buyers on the ground.
ABOUT STEVE MELHUISH
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Steve is an award-winning entrepreneur. In the last two decades, he built profitable companies throughout Asia and Europe. He co-founded PropertyGuru due to his personal frustrations at trying to find a new home in 2006. Today, PropertyGuru is the leading online property group in South East Asia used by over 11 million property seekers and 31,000 property advertisers every month.
Prior to Steve's current role, he held advisory roles at various firms including Skype, AOL, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Extreme Media, iPass and Ariadne Capital. He also led global teams and a US$500 million turnover business unit for Cable & Wireless. In 2007, Steve was awarded the Spirit of Enterprise Award in recognition of his contributions to entrepreneurship in Singapore. Steve has invested in four digital media firms and is passionate about Asia + Digital.
About ePropertyTrack
ePropertyTrack is the leading platform for new project marketing featuring over 500 new launches. It is used by the top developers and project marketing agencies and covers over 90% of active projects in Singapore. ePropertyTrack platform apps are actively used by over 22,000 agents.
ePropertyTrack originated in 2012 with a vision to track live sales on tablets and smartphones during project launches. With a focus on new projects, over time ePropertyTrack has evolved into a suite of tools covering the project marketing cycle end to end. New projects involve constantly-changing and evolving information, and the marketing process requires co-ordination between many parties. ePropertyTrack platform strives to connect and facilitate information flow between developers, marketing agencies, agents and prospects. Simplicity, ease-of-use and operational efficiency are the essence of the platform.
ePropertyTrack is headquartered in Singapore and expanded into Malaysia in 2014.
http://www.epropertytrack.com/
ABOUT KUNAL BAGGA
Founder
Kunal is a firm believer in the use of technology to make people's lives better. Previously, he was the founder of AuraTech which is a provider of information technology solutions such as customer relationship management systems to large organisations and small and medium-sized companies.
Kunal graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Computer Science. He also holds a Master's Degree in Computer Science from the same university. He worked on Smartphones at Motorola's R&D Department in USA before moving to Singapore.