Lamudi Global allocates bulk of fresh funding to PH

Lamudi Global, a company backed by giant start- up incubator Rocket Internet, has allotted bulk of its fresh funding to the Philippines, which is now the group’s “number one focused country” as it experiences simultaneous growth in e-commerce and real estate industry.

Lamudi is an online real estate platform that was brought to the Philippines in 2014 and has now more than 200,000 property listings.

Jacqueline Van Den Ende, founder and managing director of Lamudi Philippines, Inc., said that out of the 34 countries where Lamudi Global is, its operations in the Philippines will get most of the fresh funding of $34 million that the international company had recently obtained.

Van Den Ende did not say the exact amount that they got, but she emphasized that the bulk of entire fund was set aside to grow Lamudi’s operations in the Philippines.

“We have raised $31.4-million massive funding for Lamudi Global worldwide in 2015. We are now in 34 countries. This will be invested in marketing, scaling up operations, technology, among others. Right now, Philippines is the number one focused country for Lamudi Global,” Van Den Ende said.

According to her, Philippines is the perfect company to invest in when it comes to e-commerce business because the country is now “moving online” and there are a lot of real estate companies that have started to scale up their investments in boosting their online presence.

“For this year, we want to expand our dominant position. As of now, we have already captured 55 percent of total online real estate market. One of the key things that we would like to focus on is to grow our listing base. We want to ensure that every single property for sale in the country is listed in our website,” Van Den Ende said in an interview with reporters.

Aside from this, Lamudi Philippines will also use some of the fresh funds to strengthen its partnerships with real estate brokers and companies; to set up technology and business model innovations; to increase market transparency through research.

Van Den Ende said the company will be launching “a couple of tech innovation” within this year.

Last year, Lamudi Global sealed its first-ever acquisition and it was done here in the Philippines.

The company had acquired Get Sold Corp., which owns real estate classified website MyProperty.ph.

The acquisition formed part of the $18-million funding that Lamudi Global group has received in February, 2015.