What was brewing for a few months now, is finally ready to be served – Housing.com and PropTiger, in a joint statement announced their decision to merge their businesses in an all-stock deal. The new entity will receive $50 million fresh funds from News Corp backed REA Group Ltd and an additional $5 million from SoftBank Group. Dhruv Agarwala, the co-founder of PropTiger will serve as CEO of the new entity.

The transaction valued Housing at about $70-$75 million. And according to LiveMint, the Valuation of the new entity now stands at $270-$285 million.  Existing investors in Housing will be given stake in PropTiger’s Singapore entity. Horizon Ventures, an existing investor in PropTiger is likely to exit.

Housing.com’s CEO Jason Kothari has quit with immediate effect. Kothari will continue to be an advisor to the new entity through the end of February 2017, the companies said.

In September 2016, the two had struck a deal of partnership – a step which speculated that something more was in the offing. The partnership was aimed at combining Housing’s online reach with the PropTiger’s strong offline services. 

The joint entity will be the only player in India offering the full range of online and offline services in the real estate space, such as personalized search, virtual viewing, site visits, legal and financial diligence, negotiations, property registration, home loans and post- sales service,” the two companies said in a joint statement.

Both companies declined comment on the specifics of the deal.

Housing.com was started in 2012 by Rahul Yadav along with nine other co-founders as rental portal. With the realty sector booming, the business saw the growth while raising $100 million from SoftBank last year. Soon, with the market downturn, and also a tussle between the investors and Rahul Yadav leading to his resignation made it difficult for the organization to sustain. The company also down-sized more than 60% of their employees in three rounds.