PropertyGuru Makes Strategic Investment in Batdongsan.com.vn, Vietnam's No.1 Property Portal
- Written by Reporters
SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 4 October 2016 -
- Batdongsan.com.vn is used by over 2 million property seekers and has over 50 million pageviews every month
- With this investment, PropertyGuru extends its presence to Vietnam, adding a fifth core market to its property portals portfolio
PropertyGuru Group ("PropertyGuru", or the "Group"), Asia's leading online property group, today announced that it has made a strategic investment in Batdongsan.com.vn ("Batdongsan"), Vietnam's No.1 property site. While no financial terms have been disclosed by either party, this investment gives PropertyGuru two seats on the Board of Directors (or the "Board") and makes PropertyGuru one of the key shareholders of the Vietnamese property portal. Batdongsan Founder and Managing General Director, Lê Xuân Trường, will continue to operate the business and keep a significant stake in the company.
Batdongsan is used by over 2 million people in Vietnam every month -- with four times more monthly visits than its nearest competitor. The company features the most property listings for consumers -- over 1.9 million choices as of 2015, the highest number of agent clients in the market -- over 80,000 as of 2016, and employs approximately 500 staff at seven offices across Vietnam.
The investment also advances PropertyGuru's delivery on its Southeast Asia growth agenda and adds another core market to its existing portfolio of leading property sites in the region.
Jani Rautiainen, Executive Director and Co-Founder of PropertyGuru Group, said "Our property portals have become the No.1 choice in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia and so we've been looking to add the fifth market to our portals portfolio for the past couple of months. Given our existing relationship with Batdongsan and Vietnam's list of positives, choosing to deepen our current partnership with Batdongsan and add Vietnam as our fifth core market was an obvious choice. We're excited about this investment in Batdongsan as it increases our foothold in one of the largest and fastest growing countries in Southeast Asia."
In the first half of 2016, Vietnam's GDP grew by 5.5% and is expected to continue growing at 6.0-6.5% in 2016-2020. In Ho Chi Minh City, GDP grew even faster at 7.5% in the first half of 2016. The strong economic growth is a result of favourable demographics (approximately 70% of its ~94 million population is under the age of 35!), continued urbanisation, industrialisation and higher employment in the services sector and a rising middle class.
From a digital landscape point of view, Vietnam is one of the fastest growing internet markets in the world; the latter's internet users are expected to grow from ~50 million in 2016 to ~82 million in 2020. While active internet users' penetration is ~50%, active social media users' and active mobile social users' penetrations are ~37% and 31% respectively (as of Jan 2016). Vietnam is also one of the most populated smartphone markets in Southeast Asia, with smartphone users in the market estimated to reach 24.6 million in end 2016 and mobile connections at ~152% (vs. population, as of Jan 2016).
Rautiainen continued, "PropertyGuru and Batdongsan have been close partners for the past three years, and we've worked together on many fronts, including website linking, holding joint seminars, reselling each other's services and collaborating on PropertyGuru's annual Vietnam Property Congress and Awards. With this latest strategic investment in the business, we will continue to build on our established partnership, and accelerate Batdongsan's growth over the coming years."
With this investment, the two companies will collaborate more deeply to share market knowledge and industry best practices and increase collaboration across sales, marketing, and product innovation. Consumers in PropertyGuru's current markets will benefit from greater visibility into Vietnam property and potential investment opportunities, while consumers in Vietnam will benefit from additional property content, listings, and new services to ease their property searches. Agents and developers in Vietnam will gain access to PropertyGuru's products and services.
Lê Xuân Trường, Batdongsan Founder and Managing Director, said, "After serving the Vietnamese market for the past 10 years, we felt that it was now time to take the company to the next level. We've had a great relationship and partnership with PropertyGuru all these years, and we're very excited about deepening our ties to further support our mutual long-term growth and ambitions."
Trường concluded by stating, "PropertyGuru's support and capitalization, including access to new technologies and industry innovation, will allow us to grow into a major player in the region. With this partnership, we're now closer to realising our mission of meeting all real estate demands in Vietnam, with higher efficiency. I'm also especially thrilled that property seekers in Vietnam will now benefit from additional property content and news services, making the search for their dream home even easier."
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About PropertyGuru Group
PropertyGuru is Asia's foremost online property group. With a presence in nine markets, it helps over
16 million people find their dream home -- every month.
Starting out as a property search portal, PropertyGuru was founded in 2006 by two entrepreneurs with a vision to simplify the property search process and to help buyers, sellers and investors make more informed property decisions -- faster. Today, the Group manages a suite of No.1 property search portals in the region, and also covers property-related publications, events, awards, project marketing solutions and more. PropertyGuru operates 14 award-winning mobile apps, in multiple languages, across all major platforms; these have recorded over 3 million app downloads till date.
Headquartered in Singapore, PropertyGuru brings insightful content on new homes, as well as essential market news and information, to people's fingertips, helping them make confident property decisions. With innovative technologies, PropertyGuru raises the bar on how property-seekers find their dream home, offering highly interactive and immersive experiences. These include 3D virtual walk-throughs of home units and drone videos of local neighbourhoods. At any time, property-seekers can find more than 1 million homes across Southeast Asia, be it brand new developments or well-loved resale units, for buying or renting.
PropertyGuru also provides data and technology-backed solutions to real estate developers and agents, helping them sell property faster and enabling more effective sales forces. Currently, the Group generates over 600,000 enquiries for them -- every month -- across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. These enquiries, in turn, help to drive transactions valued at over US$15 billion annually.
PropertyGuru received Southeast Asia's second largest tech investment in 2015, and is backed by a world-class investor base that includes TPG, a global investment firm with over US$67 billion of assets under management and a shareholder in leading-edge companies such as Uber and Airbnb; Emtek, a media conglomerate in Indonesia; and Square Peg Capital, an Australia-founded investor of Internet companies.
For more information, please visit propertyguru.com.
About Batdongsan.com.vn
Batdongsan.com.vn is Vietnam's No.1 real estate portal. With a presence across seven cities in Vietnam -- Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang, Vung Tau, Binh Duong, Nha Trang and Hai Phong -- the company helps over 2 million people in their property search journey, every month.
Founded by Lê Xuân Trường in August 2006 and led by a highly-experienced management team with extensive experience and expertise in the real estate sector, Batdongsan aims to make the Vietnamese property market more accessible and efficient for both property consumers and advertisers alike.
The company prides itself on providing comprehensive content on and around real estate in Vietnam and equipping users with the resources they need to make well-informed property decisions, so as to facilitate easier and faster property buying/selling/rentals in Vietnam. It helps consumers both find their next home and research the market by combining hundreds of thousands of property listings with market data, local information and community tools.
With top rankings on leading search engines such as Google, the company has grown rapidly to become a clear market leader. Today, it has become Vietnam's leading online destination for property consumers to search for homes and do their market research, and the favoured online marketing partner for Vietnam's real estate agents and property developers.
Batdongsan is used by over 2 million people who generate over 50 million pageviews every month -- with four times more monthly visits than its nearest competitor. The company features over 1.9 million property listings for its consumers (as of 2015), has the highest number of agent clients in the market -- over 80,000 (as of 2016), and employs approximately 500 staff.
For more information, please visit www.batdongsan.com.vn.
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