QuikrHomes acquires Grabhouse, launches cashless rentals

QuikrHomes has announced the launch of its cashless managed rentals solution with the acquisition of Grabhouse—digitally-driven home rental solutions provider. This strategic move will help the company address an acute pain point in India’s real estate market with a solution that does not involve any cash payments. As part of this, Quikr will integrate Grabhouse’s products and technology stack into QuikrHomes while also reaping strong synergies the business has with its other verticals.

Founded by Prateek Shukla and Pankhuri Shrivastava in July 2013, Grabhouse offers end-to-end digital solutions for the rental needs of both owners and tenants. The platform offers a managed rental homes model which comprises of a range of fully furnished, ready-to-move-in apartments across 4 major cities. The managed rental homes model operates on top of a broader rental marketplace which offers the largest inventory of PGs and peer to peer rentals in India. The marketplace is present in 11 cities and has served 700,000 customers to date.

Grabhouse will continue operations as an independent brand for managed rental homes. As part of the overall integration process, its founders and entire team will move to the Quikr HQ.

Talking about the acquisition, Atul Tewari, COO, Quikr said, “We are very excited about the launch of our managed rentals model – it brings convenience to consumers while eliminating cash from property rentals, and we are excited to start it with the acquisition of Grabhouse. Our business here will also benefit from unique competitive advantages as the Grabhouse target market has a great match with many of our other businesses such as C2C and bikes. On the cost side, the operational costs of the business will directly get shared with our services business.”

“Quikr has built a phenomenal ecosystem for all kinds of buyers and sellers. Through its multiple verticals, Quikr caters to a large target audience which opens for us a sea of potential consumers and property owners. At Grabhouse we’ve laid the foundation of a sound cashless business model for house rentals. We foresee massive business opportunity now, as joining forces with Quikr means scaling quickly to build not just a long term rentals brand but also enter other new territories,” said Prateek & Pankhuri, Founders of Grabhouse.

With its verticalization strategy and pioneering technology-based innovations, Quikr has been growing both organically and inorganically. It has been steadily scaling each of its five verticals over the past couple of months and has also made other acquisitions to further accelerate its growth.