Australia’s REA Group cashes in stake for Rs 458 crore Housing.com deal with Aurum
REA Group will hold a 24.9% stake in listed Indian firm Aurum PropTech after selling it Housing.com in an all-stock transaction valued at Rs 458 crore.
An Australian digital property company is restructuring how it plays the Indian real estate market. REA Group will exit direct ownership of Housing.com but pick up a bigger stake in the Indian company buying it, after Aurum PropTech’s board on Thursday cleared an all-stock deal worth Rs 458 crore.
Under the arrangement, Aurum will acquire 100% of Locon Solutions, which owns Housing.com, from REA India. Rather than a cash payout, REA will receive 1.98 crore Aurum shares priced at Rs 231.4 each. Combined with its existing 5.5% holding in Aurum, that allotment will take REA’s stake in the listed Indian company to 24.9%.
REA’s relationship with the Housing.com ecosystem goes back to 2017, when it first invested in Elara Technologies, the group that owned Housing.com along with PropTiger.com and Makaan.com. It raised that stake to 61% in 2020, and Elara was renamed REA India in 2021. The new deal effectively converts REA’s direct control of Housing.com into an indirect stake via Aurum, letting the Australian firm keep a foothold in the Indian market without running the India operations itself.
For Aurum, Housing.com is the latest addition to a proptech portfolio that already includes rental platform NestAway, bought for up to Rs 90 crore in 2023, and student housing operator HelloWorld. The company says it wants to connect property search, developer inventory, brokers, rentals and transactions across these businesses on a common AI and data layer.
Aurum is also raising fresh capital alongside the acquisition. It will issue 51 lakh convertible warrants to its promoter, Aurum RealEstate Developers, at the same Rs 231.4 price, a move that could bring in up to Rs 118 crore. If those warrants are fully converted, the promoter’s fully diluted stake in Aurum would climb to 41.1%.
The transaction is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close by September 30. Housing.com, founded in 2012, has changed hands and ownership structures more than once since a 2015 boardroom battle removed co-founder and chief executive Rahul Yadav, after which the company restructured its operations.
Wikimedia Commons/by Kushagra140
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