99acres Grows Revenue 24% As It Looks To Re-Catch Housing.com

Info Edge, the parent company of Indian real estate portal 99acres, has released its results for Q3 of the FY22-23 Indian financial calendar. Highlights of the company's activities for the three months ended December 31st include:

• Revenue for 99acres was up 24% year-on-year at INR 729 million ($8.8 million)
• Profit before tax for 99acres fell slightly from INR -255 million to INR -260 million ($ -3.1 million)
• Both listings and paid listings were down slightly on the comparison period.
• Overall company revenues for Info Edge were up 4.4% at INR 5,552 million ($57 million)

As well as leading recruitment vertical Naukri.com which accounts for around 80% of company revenue, Info Edge operates the 99acres real estate portal (13% of revenue) as well as the matrimonial site Jeevansathi and educational site Shikasta.

While the company's recruitment vertical thrives, the subdued Indian housing market and outside investment in its competition continue to keep Info Edge's real estate vertical down.

99acres has been overtaken in terms of traffic acquisition by REA Group-owned Housing.com over recent quarters and has not had a profitable quarter on an operating EBITDA basis since the beginning of the 20-21 financial year.

More bad news in the company's analyst call in which CEO Hitesh Oberoi confirmed that Info Edge would be writing down its $33 million investment in 4B Network “in light of the current state of the environment and the significant uncertainty towards funding options available to 4B in future.”

99acres invested in the brokerage firm founded in 2020 by former Housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav with the latest injection of capital coming in September 2022.

There were positive signs for the company however with the percentage of paid listings on the platform increasing to 59%.

A company presentation highlighted 99acres' ongoing efforts to build out rich, user-generated content around localities. The tactic has served other real estate portals around the world well and has been adopted by CoStar whose CEO recently said that the company is doing "crazy projects" and "hiring a thousand folks" to build up neighbourhood content, grow traffic and take on Zillow.