quikr-kEPF--621x414@LiveMint

Bengaluru: Online classifieds portal Quikr India Pvt. Ltd has acquired real estate portal Commonfloor.com for an undisclosed amount, ending months of speculation on a prospective merger.

Both companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal. Mint had earlier reported that both companies are in the final stage of a share-swap deal that could value Commonfloor anywhere between $120 million and $200 million.

“As we started innovating specifically for the category, we realised that innovations we were looking to make dovetailed very well with what Commonfloor has been doing,” said Pranay Chulet, the founder and chief executive of Quikr. “Commonfloor has got very strong developer relationships. QuikrHomes has good relationships, but it has more consumer traffic.”

As part of the deal, Commonfloor will get seats on the board of Quikr and will continue as a separate brand, Chulet said. He didn’t elaborate.

Commonfloor will have access to Quikr’s 30 million consumers and the combined entity will have 2 million real estate listings, the companies said in a joint statement.

The deal comes in the backdrop of a broader slump in the online real estate sector in India as consumers hold back purchases amid a sharp rise in prices, along side a broader slowdown in funding for Internet businesses.

Quikr has been strengthening the portfolio of services it offers since mid-last year, reorganizing its business into five core categories, including automobiles, home services and customer-to-customer sales and bolstering each of them through acquisitions. These categories together accounted for about 90% of the 10 million listings on its platform.

For Commonfloor (maxHeap Technologies Pvt. Ltd), founded in 2007 by Sumit Jain, Lalit Mangal and Vikas Malpani, the deal comes at a time when the company is struggling to raise funds.

Commonfloor has so far raised more than $60 million from Accel Partners, Tiger Global and Google Capital in multiple rounds. It posted a loss of Rs.46 crore on revenue of Rs.87 crore for the year ended 31 March, according to data from the Registrar of Companies.

It was not immediately clear if the Commonfloor founders will stay back or exit the company.

Since its inception in 2008, Quikr has raised $346 million from investors such as Investment AB Kinnevik, Tiger Global management, Steadview Capital Management and Matrix Partners India among others. The company earns a bulk of its revenue from third-party advertisements, lead- generation for car dealers and real estate brokers and paid-listings by sellers.