PropertyGuru Acquires RumahDijual, One of Indonesia's Leading Property Sites

Now holds 43% combined engagement market share, almost double that of closest competitor

Indonesia is now PropertyGuru's second biggest market in terms of traffic

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 3 December 2015 - PropertyGuru Group, ("PropertyGuru" or the "Group"), Asia's leading online property portal group, announced today that it has acquired RumahDijual.com, one of Indonesia's leading property websites, for an undisclosed amount. This comes on the back of its latest acquisition of leading new project marketing solution, ePropertyTrack, in July, following a S$175 million investment from a strategic consortium of three investors including Emtek Group -- Indonesia's largest media group - in June.

Founded by Indonesian Yohanes Aristianto, RumahDijual literally means "house for sale." The acquisition of RumahDijual.com, coupled with PropertyGuru's Rumah.com site, has cemented the Group's market leadership in the country.  It means that 43% of all time spent on property portals in Indonesia is now spent with PropertyGuru (refer to Figure 1; source: comScore[1]), almost double that of its closest competitor. Currently, Rumah.com and RumahDijual.com combined have 5.5 million property seekers viewing over 30 million property pages -- each month[2] - making Indonesia PropertyGuru's second biggest market in terms of traffic.

Steve Melhuish, CEO and Co-Founder of PropertyGuru, said, "Indonesia is strategically important for PropertyGuru because it is the largest, and one of the fastest growing, property and digital markets in Southeast Asia. Together with our local partner, Emtek, we have earmarked tens of millions of dollars in the coming years to bring further innovations to the Indonesian market, to help solidify our market leadership. This latest acquisition is a further testament to our long term commitment to the Indonesian property market. We bring market transparency with an unrivalled volume and diversity of choices, relevant and reliable information, and innovative search experience to home seekers, helping them to make more confident property decisions. And to our trade customers we bring a comprehensive suite of sales and marketing services, on top of increased leads, due to wider reach."

Rumah.com has engaged in numerous investments and market engagement activities to solidify its leadership position in Indonesia. Over the past two years, Rumah.com has invested in innovations such as a recent mobile app refresh, a website revamp in Q3 2015, and the incorporation of a mortgage calculator in its website and mobile applications, in order to make home affordability more transparent. As a result, consumer visits to Rumah.com have grown by 22%[3] year-on-year, with mobile traffic growth of 53%².

PropertyGuru's upside opportunity in Indonesia is tremendous as it has great potential to become a high growth and high demand market driven by its booming population growth, an emerging middle class, rapid urbanisation and growth in mobile internet consumption. This growing population will benefit from the widest variety of property choices with PropertyGuru's acquisition of RumahDijual.com, with close to 500,000 listings across the major islands in Indonesia.

Indonesia has the largest population in the Southeast Asian region with approximately 256 million people and growing by another 2.4 million people (working age population) per annum[4]. Its GDP is currently growing at 5% per annum (2014 estimates), with 53.7% of its total population considered urbanised. In the last five years, the country registered an average urbanisation rate of 2.69% annually[5], lifting millions from lower income socioeconomic levels to the middle class and/or affluent categories. This has led to a rapid urbanisation where 68% of its population is expected to be living in cities and this figure will increase to 82% by 2045[6]. A rise in affluence also translates into a surge in mobile internet consumption, and according to Frost & Sullivan, Indonesia will have around 1.7 billion connected devices in 2020, with over 470 million mobile subscribers and over 200 million active internet users[7].

PropertyGuru in Singapore

With this acquisition, PropertyGuru Group further solidifies its leadership position in the region, with 91.8% engagement market share^[8] in Singapore and 52.7% in Thailand, and a close second in Malaysia with 40.2%. After exponential traffic growth in the early years when PropertyGuru Singapore started nearly 10 years ago, it grew by 8%³ in consumer visits over the past year, despite the cooling of real estate industry due to government's intervention. It also witnessed an increasing shift in consumer usage from desktop to mobile, where 60%³ of consumer visits were via mobile in October 2014, to 68% year-on-year.

Image

Figure 1: Engagement Market Share, Indonesia (Source: comScore1) With a combined engagement market share of 43%, Rumah.com & RumahDijual.com is now almost double that of closest competitor.

http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/4083

Company logo

http://release.media-outreach.com/i/Download/4082

About PropertyGuru Group

PropertyGuru Group is Asia's leading online property portal group used by more than 14 million property buyers, viewing over 116 million property pages and generating over 500,000 enquiries for real estate developer and agent advertisers -- every month -- across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.

Headquartered in Singapore, PropertyGuru was founded in 2006 by two entrepreneurs with a vision to simplify the property search process and help buyers, sellers and investors make better property decisions faster. Taking advantage of Asia's growing affluence, property demand and online explosion, PropertyGuru has become market leader in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. The Group received S$175million investment - the largest in the technology sector in Southeast Asia in 2015 - to support its innovation, marketing and further expansion in the region.

With a continued focus on innovation, PropertyGuru has developed and launched 15 mobile applications in four countries and three languages. At present, the Group records over 2.5 million downloaded mobile apps. PropertyGuru was also the first to integrate its website with social media and first to launch Singapore's only dedicated property newspaper, read by more than 100,000 readers island-wide every month. PropertyGuru has also developed a property events platform with approximately 20 shows held annually across four countries, addressing 20,000 potential property buyers on the ground.

PropertyGuru offices in the region include:

• PropertyGuru.com.sg in Singapore
• PropertyGuru.com.my in Malaysia
• DDProperty.com in Thailand
• Rumah.com and RumahDijual.com in Indonesia

ABOUT STEVE MELHUISH

Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Steve is an award-winning entrepreneur. In the last two decades, he built profitable companies throughout Asia and Europe. He co-founded PropertyGuru due to his personal frustrations at trying to find a new home in 2006. Today, PropertyGuru is the leading online property group in South East Asia used by over 10 million property seekers and 31,000 property advertisers every month. 

Prior to Steve's current role, he had advised various firms including Skype, AOL, Virgin Media, Vodafone, Extreme Media, iPass and Ariadne Capital. He also led global teams and a US$500 million turnover 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 has invested in 4 digital media firms and is passionate about Asia + Digital. 

ABOUT RUMAHDIJUAL.COM

RumahDijual.com is a leading website founded in 2010 by Yohanes Aristianto in Jakarta for property agents and home owners to sell their properties throughout Indonesia. RumahDijual, which translates to "house for sale", was selected as the domain name as the term is well known and often found in newspapers, classified ads, banners, brochures and other promotional media in Indonesia. The name RumahDijual also clearly describes the nature of the website content, conveys a positive impression and is easy to remember for target audiences.

RumahDijual.com features over 100, 000 live listings and is reported to have over 2.5 million visits, and 13.8 million page views per month[9].

ABOUT YOHANES ARISTIANTO

Yohanes Aristianto is the sole founder of RumahDijual.com.  His passion for technological development led him to start RumahDijual.com immediately after obtaining his postgraduate degree at the Insitut Teknologi Bandung.