Lamudi, Rocket Internet online property portal has raised $31.4 million to strengthen its operations in Asia and Latin America.
This new investment is from three entities – Asia Pacific Internet Group — a joint venture from Rocket Internet itself and Qatari operator Ooredoo — Holtzbrinck Ventures and Tengelmann Ventures, a division of retail group Tengelmann.
It is important to note that the African part of Lamudi will not be getting anything from this funds as it is only for the Asian and Latin American operations.
The three players are all existing backers, raised $18m for Lamudi exactly a year ago.
According to Lamudi co-founder and managing director Paul Philipp Hermann, these funds will go towards growing the company’s presence in its nine markets.
“We want to become the leading online real-estate portal in all of our markets,” Hermann told TechCrunch in an interview. “We’ve done that in some markets, but want to build the brand in more.”
Lamudi said its revenue grew 460 percent last year, and it believes the rate could be higher still in 2016. If it were to decide to put expansion plans on hold for now, the management team believes it could reach profitability in the coming year or so.
“We can become profitable with this money,” Hermann said. “The question for us [with regard to pursuing future market expansions or profit] is where we’ll be in two years’ time.”
