[Editor Notes : Nothing is as powerful as data and these articles are part of our coverage of #IndianStartupData – i.e. an overview of financial performance of selected Indian startups with a belief that it gives the audience a good picture of the companies and the ecosystem in general.]
Housing had a terrific 2015 – the company was in news for its founder/CEO, Rahul Yadav and importantly, the Lookup campaign, which was splashed all over the web and offline world.
Housing.com recorded a revenue of INR 12.7 crores in FY14-15, out of which INR 5.5 crores was revenue from operations.
Housing loss went up by 5.7X, thanks to the aggressive Lookup campaign (Housing spent close to 120 crores in advertising and promotions).
Competitor, Commonfloor in the same FY14-15 recorded a revenue of Rs. 45 crores.
Housing shareholding structure.
In total, Housing has raised $139.5M in 4 rounds of funding.
Since we are talking about FY14-15, the context has changed a lot after Rahul Yadav was fired. Till the financial year, he owned 5% of the company. Softbank being the majority owner (33%), Nexus @19%, Helion @9%, Qualcomm at 5% and other founders at 7.5%.
These numbers must have changed after Rahul Yadav was fired and new executive team was brought in. But the key thing that startup founders and investors should note is this:
If founding team owns ONLY 12.5% of the company (after Series B), what’s the incentive left for them to make it big/continue?
Plus, how will you make space for more senior hires?
Who calls the shots? The investor who owns ~3X of the company?
Housing’s Focus On Revenue
Housing, till FY14-15 wasn’t really focused on revenue (watch our interview with Rahul Yadav) and the revenue focus has kicked in only 3 months back.
The company has brought in Jason Kothari as the CEO, who is focusing more on revenue side of things and has also culled a few areas which weren’t core to Housing (followed by layoffs).
Competitor Commonfloor has been acquired by Quikr.
Watch our interview with Rahul Yadav when he was the CEO of Housing.
