Magicbricks starts to break out with high double digit growth; registers 48% YOY jump in Q1 FY’19 revenue

• Q1 FY’19 revenues touch Rs. 47.5 crore on the back of strong innovation & sentiment revival
• Company returns to its pre-demonetisation growth trajectory
• Plans to further disrupt category with a slew of new offerings 

Noida, July 24, 2018: Magicbricks, India’s No.1 property site, today announced a strong growth of 48% in Q1 FY’19 with revenues touching Rs.47.5 crore, signalling a strong start to the new financial year. A combination of factors like product innovation, new revenue streams and market buoyancy drove the revenue performance, providing a significant momentum as it starts to break away in the category. The company reiterated that the revenue figures are from its online operations and do not include any group company revenues.

These results are quite significant given the overall slowdown that the Real Estate sector has been witnessing over the past three years. Factors like stability in property prices and an upswing in housing sales in Q4 FY’18 have led to market and sentiment revival, benefitting the leading brand. Magicbricks’ PropIndex report suggests that 66% of the 750 major localities in the country have witnessed price stability/increase between Jan-Mar 2017 and Jan-Mar 2018.

Magicbricks hosted over 1.1 million active properties as on 30th June with over 45,000 properties being added daily. The company claimed to lead its nearest competitor by 30% in properties for sale and 70% in properties for rent. The company reported that it had over 45000 active paid sellers as of end June, of which 2400 were developers, 14000 were brokers and the rest 29,000 were paying individual sellers or landlords. Success of new products such as the Certified Agent program, remarketing solutions, and the e-auction platform have contributed to making Magicbricks as the most preferred channel of advertisements and customer acquisition for developers, brokers and for individual sellers.

Apart from revenue leadership, Magicbricks also leads in terms of traffic and registered buyers. Property searches jumped by 50%, with cities like Bangalore, Delhi witnessing a jump in searches by 60% and 65% respectively. The company reported that it has achieved a run-rate of 60 million visits and 2.5million registered buyers in the quarter of which 800,000 buyers registered themselves for home buying, 1.2million for renting, 200,000 for commercial properties and the rest between other property types.

Commenting on the Q1 FY’19 performance, Mr. Sudhir Pai, CEO, Magicbricks, said: “We’re now leveraging our scale and market position to push deeper into the market. We’ve now aggregated about 80% of all supply and about 60% of all buyers in the market. About 45% of all landlord listings on Magicbricks are now exclusive to us. Besides scale, we shall continue to innovate on new services that help curate, enrich information and help buyers and sellers transact on our platform.”

Talking about the plan to accelerate the growth further, Magicbricks has a Three Horizon strategy in place and it plans to remain strongly focused both on growth and profitability.

“Our Three Horizon growth strategy puts us best placed to seize the opportunities as the market is turning around. The first horizon is to continue aggressive scaling on our core platform with an objective to make Magicbricks as a dominant, preferred portal of choice for buyers and sellers. The 2nd horizon is about repositioning Magicbricks from being a discovery platform to a full stack solution. And the 3rd horizon is about building a bunch of adjacent products and services to enhance the entire ecosystem” said Mr. Pai.

In the next quarter, Magicbricks has planned a series of product, content and marketing initiatives. “We are looking at an exciting second quarter as well, which will witness some industry first innovations for both business and customers. We are launching a chat-based communication interface to address privacy concerns of buyers; a Brand Store; MB TV as a content platform; plus we will have a slew of exclusive launches or deals around select projects that would be available only through our online bidding platform,” Mr. Pai added.

Each of these innovations are an industry first initiative further underlying company’s emphasis on innovations and using it as a growth engine. In a post RERA world, the Brand Store aims to help aspiring developers, both mid-size and small, to scale up, build brand values and be loved by consumers. Magicbricks TV attempts to simplify real estate for end users by un-complicating it. It would not only help home buyers take an informed decision but will also offer lighter content on real estate. Magicbricks’ e-auction platform not only provides a seamless consumer experience but also offers a level playing field through a transparent and fair price discovery system. Besides banks like PNB Housing, SBI and Oriental bank, the e-auction platform will also see launch of exclusive projects by developers, who have also taken a liking for this new innovative sales channel.

“At its peak, the size of the primary market was about 350,000 units per year and it had reduced to as low as 200,000 units. We’re seeing a gradual uptick with end consumer sales picking up in several markets and expect the industry to clock over 300,000 units in this fiscal. The market is now driven by end users with an abundance of good deals. The number of localities which continue to witness price decline has gone down and we’re now seeing stable prices/slight price increases in 66% of the 750 localities that we track. Over time, we really hope to see the market grow to a million plus units per year which is very much needed for a country of our size,” said Mr. Pai.

Corporate Comm India(CCI Newswire)