After getting global marquee investors such as Manny Singh and Peter Mann on board, online real estate marketplace Clicbrics now plans to fan across smaller cities and towns
Rohit Malik, a hedge-fund veteran who has had stints in the US and India over the past two decades, believes in hunting for opportunity in the midst of a crisis. The bigger the crisis, the maximum is the return. Take, for instance, the gloomy data on real estate: Unsold houses are reportedly at an all-time high of 12.76 lakh in India’s top 30 cities. Malik, who turned entrepreneur in 2017 when he started online real estate marketplace Clicbrics, stays undeterred, and sees a silver lining: Smaller cities.
“I don’t believe there are no buyers. There is a buyer everywhere,” says Malik, who raised $3 million in a pre-Series A round from a consortium of global marquee investors such as Manny Singh of Kavi Fund, Peter Mann of Gluskin Sheff and a bunch of HNIs from the US and Canada early this week. “People argue that the real-estate market has hit dead end, but I totally disagree,” he says. Excerpts from an interview with Forbes India.
Does the real estate market look gloomy now?
It’s interesting. People say there are no buyers, but I don’t think so. There is another way to look at things. For instance, an ophthalmologist might not get too many patients because people are not serious about getting their eyes examined, but a cardiologist could be minting money. So it matters how you are doing business, and where you are going to catch your potential customers.
There is no reason to be pessimistic. There are buyers. The fact that investors are backing a two-year old real estate startup means that there is a market and there is an opportunity.
So markets of tier II and beyond will drive real estate?