PropertyGuru Wins Big at the OPP Awards for Excellence

London, 16 October 2012 – PropertyGuru, with an expanding portfolio
of six property portals in nine countries in Asia, picked up Best Innovation – Gold, Best Media – Silver and Best Online Service – Bronze at the recent OPP Awards for Excellence in London.

The gala event which saw more than 350 representatives from global property developers, real estate agencies and other industry organisations vied for honours in 28 award categories. Judges, comprising of a panel of 50 influential industry leaders from around the world, weighed in on hundreds of entrants.

As the gold standard bearer for Best Innovation, PropertyGuru’s win
is a cumulative result of focusing on mobile technology as the key driver in PropertyGuru’s vision of expanding its online property portal share in the region. In response to the growth of the Asian mobile market and upward trend of mobile internet usage, PropertyGuru launched the PropertyGuru AgentNet and Consumer Mobile Application on all major platforms – iPhone, BlackBerry and Android, and are available in English, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia. These mobile apps have garnered more than 200,000 downloads combined and accounts for more than 1.3 million monthly visits or an average of a quarter of all traffic regionally.

The Best Media – Silver title is testament to PropertyGuru’s strategic intent of providing a one-stop, fully integrated and total advertising solution targeted at augmenting the business of real estate developers, agents and home-related firms. Enabling property seekers to arrive at faster and better informed property decisions in searching for their desired properties for sale, rent or investment has resulted in a staggering 9.5 million buyers viewing 500,000 properties across 75 million property pages monthly and a growing client database of 25,000 paying real estate agents from over 200 real estate developer and agencies.

PropertyGuru’s bronze win in the Best Online Service category is credited to AgentNet, PropertyGuru’s comprehensive digital platform which allows real agents to easily market and update their properties in real-time alongside a host of support functions and services specially implemented to expand brand exposure. To date, AgentNet has generated more than 41,500 business leads and a total over 300,000 sales enquiries by potential customers for real estate developers, agents and home-related firms.

Commenting on PropertyGuru’s wins, Xavier Wiggins, Chief Executive Officer of RGG Ltd and owner of the OPP Awards said: “I am delighted that the PropertyGuru Group won three awards this year. There are very few companies which have the scale and global reputation of PropertyGuru and these awards attest to the excellent work being done.”

Steve Melhuish, Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer of The PropertyGuru Group could not be more pleased with the awards scoop. “This is another pivotal milestone in PropertyGuru’s short history since its inception in 2006. Our brand continues to grow and our consumers and institutional audience can look forward to more innovative products in the coming months. PropertyGuru remains a sustainable business model backed by our strong operating tenets that ensure best practices when it comes to providing the best quality online services in the market”.

About PropertyGuru
Headquartered in Singapore, PropertyGuru was co-founded in 2006 as a self-funded company, with a vision to make the property search process a breeze for buyers, sellers and investors. Taking advantage of Asia’s growing affluence for property and the online boom, it received its first VC investment funding in 2008. Since then, the company has grown rapidly, reaping profits and positive cashflow in 2009 and doubling revenue growth in 2011.

PropertyGuru is now Asia’s leading online property portal group, with a high-volume of online real estate presence across nine territories in Asia, including offices in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and partnerships with leading property websites in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam and China. It has a current inventory of electronic-driven properties including75 million property pages with 500,000 residential and commercial properties listings from 200 developers to attract 9.5 million buyers and 25,000 paying real estate agent subscribers and developer advertisers,  generating close to 300,000 advertiser enquiries monthly.

To date, PropertyGuru has also created 12 mobile applications in 4 countries and 3 languages which garnered 200,000 mobile application downloads, is the first to integrate website with social media as well as circulate Singapore’s only dedicated property print publication with dispersion outreach of over 500 key locations island-wide.

Executive Biography

Steve Melhuish, Co-Founder and Group Chief Executive Officer

Steve is an award-winning entrepreneur.

For the last two decades, Steve built profitable companies throughout Asia and Europe and in 2006 along with his partner Jani Rautiainen, founded PropertyGuru Group.

Under the auspices of this newly established holding group, PropertyGuru.com.sg was started with the aim of providing a one-stop online shop for the listing and sale of residential properties to individual and institutional home buyers and investors respectively.

Prior to Steve’s current role, he held executive positions in various venture capital firms including Skype, AOL, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Extreme Media, iPass and Ariadne Capital. In all, Steve’s expertise in leading global teams resulted in a US$500 million turnover for a 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 is a non-executive director for two other firms, an angel investor and member of the Business Angels Network South East Asia.

About OPP Awards
The OPP Awards now in its fifth year, is judged by industry leaders from around the world. The OPP Awards celebrate the best developers, estate agents and associated companies working in the global cross-border residential property industry.

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