Gurugram based startup Square Yards, providing real estate solutions since 2014 has recently acquired Mumbai-based rentals and property management platform Azuro.

On the acquisition Vivek Agarwal, cofounder and CTO of Square Yards said that while the company has helped thousands of customers buy homes that they love and built the real estate platform that agents, developers and banks prefer, other aspects such as rentals and property management were missing from the platform. Whereas, Azuro, which is managing over 1500 properties in Mumbai, has shown some exceptional growth, especially in the rental space, he added. “We felt that this is a complimentary service to our business which can make our platform a full-stack real estate platform. From selling to renting to managing properties, we now have all under one platform.” 

Square Yards was founded in 2014 by Tanuj Shori, Vivek Agarwal and Kanika Gupta. It is a real estate aggregation and transaction platform which enables the complete lifecycle of owning and living in a home including research, due diligence, selling, financing and more. With this acquisition, the Square Yards will begin operations in house rentals and property management as well.

With annual revenue of $45 Mn and gross transactional transaction value reaching $1 Bn this year, Square Yards is becoming a key driving force in the real estate industry in India. The  acquisition will facilitate Square Yards to scale this business in India as well as in other countries where it operates.

Azuro was founded in 2016 by IIT Bombay alumni Altaf Ahmad, Sushant Kumar, Sudhanshu Mishra, Ayush Agrawal and Vishal Chauthmal. The startup offers rental property management solution and helps homeowners in finding tenants as well as verifying them by performing background checks.

Additionally, it helps in taking care of the maintenance of the home by conducting periodic inspections, rent collection, move-in and move-out audits among other things to ease out the whole journey of renting a house for both owners and tenants.

As one of the major factors which are driving acquisitions in today’s startup ecosystem is the technology leveraged by companies in their operations, which has also been the case with Square Yards acquiring Azuro.

 “They have technologies such as real-time pricing and property management applications for both owners and tenants which brings transparency for both parties. Azuro also has a backend management application which improves the whole experience. All these technologies will now be leveraged by Square Yards,” Agarwal said.

In a statement, Shori, CEO, square Yards, said “Square Yards is building an integrated intermediary ecosystem for the real estate industry. From sellers to buyers, property agents to brokerage firms, the startup wants all of them to come under one single umbrella.”

Explaining how the company is making this ecosystem in the real estate industry, Agarwal said, “Square Yards is bringing all the stakeholders on a single platform. Claiming that they are already the largest platform for aggregating new homes. We have a platform called square Connect where we actually aggregate demand from these properties and trade them on our platform to do more business.”

Besides India, Square Yards also operates in nine other countries including Canada, UAE, Australia, and Hong Kong. The startup is looking to expand in South-East Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam where the market is quite fragmented right now.