Anarock Property Consultants acquires residential business of Redwoods Group

Anarock Property Consultants acquired the residential business of Redwoods, the Indian arm of Australian real estate agent LJ Hooker. Around 50 employees from Redwoods’ residential operations will now work under Ashwinder Raj Singh, the Anarock chief executive who is expanding the 750-strong team of residential brokers at the consultancy. Redwoods, meanwhile, plans to work on asset management, transaction advisory and land business apart from increasing focus on the commercial segment. "All the above functions will now be operated under the Redwoods platform," managing director Anuj Nautiyal said. "The acquisition will help Anarock Property Consultants to get a strong foothold in the residential leasing business. The India residential leasing market is expected to expand further with improving return for investors," said Puri. Puri said his firm is looking at acquiring more companies in the offline real estate space across the top seven cities in India, including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR. "We are aggressively looking to expand our talents base and be a 1,000-employee firm by the end of the year," he said. Anarock operates through a hybrid model of online and offline convergence. In July, it appointed Housing.com's cofounder Rahul Yadav as chief product and technology officer. The company launched its operations under its flagship brand name of Anarock in June 2017 and is well on its way to cross Rs 100 crore revenues in 2017. It is targeting revenue of Rs 250 crore in 2018. Puri rebranded JLL's erstwhile residential brokerage business, which he acquired earlier this year. Simultaneously, he announced the Firm’s real estate investment and fund platform, which will invest Rs 300 crore in residential projects. Anarock Investment and Fund platform, which is targeting a capitalisation of $500 million (Rs 3,200 crore) by 2020, currently houses two funds. ROF-I, with its recent investments, stands fully deployed at Rs 161 crore and has already demonstrated successful exits. ROF-II, for which Rs 300 crore were raised in 2016, will invest into meaningful residential assets from an existing pipeline and its deployment will commence as soon as it completes the last leg of regulatory requirements, the company said.