HouseEazy, an online marketplace for pre-owned homes, raises $1mn seed funding led by Antler

Hyderabad: HouseEazy, a vertical marketplace for resale homes, has raised $1 Mn in seed funding led by Antler. Other notable funds in the round include India Accelerator, AC Ventures, Agility Ventures, Finvolve Ventures and industry veterans like Pirojsha Godrej (Executive Chairperson at Godrej Properties) & Sandeep Aggarwal (Founder at Droom).

With the mission to bring trust, transparency and convenience to secondary real estate transactions, HouseEazy is building a full-stack, data-driven technology platform to provide the best prices & instant liquidity to sellers and title-checked, refurbished, ready-to-move-in homes to buyers. HouseEazy uses a proprietary machine-learning algorithm with over 1.25 mn data points to provide real-time price offers, eliminating the need for multiple meetings & negotiations for sellers. The platform offers hundreds of pre-verified options, showcased with cutting-edge tools like virtual staging, 3D walkthroughs & drone shoots, enabling buyers to shortlist their dream home from the comfort of their couch. A one-stop solution, HouseEazy also provides in-house value-added services such as instant mortgage processing and legal support to its customers, making the buying and selling experience streamlined and simple.

HouseEazy founders Tarun Sainani and Deepak Bhatia, who previously worked together at Godrej Properties, bring over 25 years of combined experience in the real estate industry. Between them, they have managed over $1.2 Bn of real estate sales and have deep expertise across the value chain. Now solving for an acute market gap, they are building HouseEazy for customers to safely buy and sell ready homes at the click of a button, eliminating inefficiencies & risks of the traditional offline process.

Tarun Sainani, Co-Founder at HouseEazy, said - “The way secondary transactions are done in India has not changed for decades. They are still done traditionally, with buyers and sellers facing a lot of risk and long closure times. While these are large ticket-size transactions, the experience has always been abysmal, primarily due to the lack of a strong anchor. HouseEazy solves this need gap by operating as an asset manager and closing the transaction in 15 days instead of 3-4 months it usually takes in the traditional process - all this with 100% safety. In less than 18 months, we have already closed over 700 buy/sell transactions with the help of our tech stack built specifically for middle-class consumers.”

Deepak Bhatia, Co-Founder at HouseEazy, added - “We have already clocked an ARR of Rs 250 Cr (GMV) while maintaining healthy profitability and expect to hit Rs 1000 Cr ARR in the next 12-15 months from the NCR market alone. Our asset-light approach and quick turnaround is highly capital-efficient & enables us to scale rapidly with limited funding. We use an innovative GTM and have already onboarded more than 3000 partners on our portal, who provide real time on-ground data, enable cost effective lead generation and quick entry into new geographies. The funds raised in this round will be used to further build our distribution and strengthen our tech capabilities.”

Commenting on the investment, Rajiv Srivatsa, Partner at Antler in India, said - “The buying & selling process for resale residential properties is broken. Unlike the primary market, there are no trusted brands in this space. The $75 Bn secondary real estate market is growing rapidly with strong tailwinds of increasing urbanization and is ripe for innovation. HouseEazy is addressing a deep consumer need gap in a massive market and has already shown promising early traction. We are excited to partner with the team as they create the go-to destination for pre-owned home transactions in India.”