New Delhi, February 26, 2019: Venture Catalysts-backed HomeCapital, a technology company that pioneered India’s First Home down payment assistance program, has successfully concluded its pre-Series A funding. The round was led by Astarc Ventures, with participation from Venture Catalysts, Anand Piramal of the Piramal Group, Singapore Angel Network, Venture Gurukool, Anuj Golecha, Samyakth Capital, Gaurav Gandhi of Essgee group, and Shalin Shah, a renowned Coinbase seed investor.
HomeCapital aims to leverage the proceeds for its aggressive business expansion, developing and scaling technology infrastructure, and increasing the strength of its workforce.
Hari Krishnan, Fund Manager, Astarc Ventures said “Home ownership has been a deep routed aspiration for all Indians and Homecapital solves a very deep problem for prospective home buyers. We are very excited about vertical based financial lending opportunities and Home Capital is a perfect mixture of great time and large opportunity “
HomeCapital, with its network-based business model, is focussed on supporting first-time home buyers with up to half of the down payment required at zero interest cost. HomeCapital has already helped close to 500 families fulfil their housing dreams in the last 8 months of its operations. The company aims to help accelerate the $100 bn housing industry which is poised to reach approximately $500 bn by 2025.
Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, President, Venture Catalysts said, “HomeCapital investment is our classic case of angel investing at an idea stage with a innovative solution towards a very acute housing problem by a great founder and team who have delivered a brilliant execution.”
HomeCapital is spearheaded by Founder Lalit Menghani, Madhusudan Sharma, Anirban Bhattacharya, Prasad Ajinkya, Saurabh Mehta and Prem Shankar leading financial alliances, business development, technology and operations. It was seed funded by Dr Apoorv Sharma and Anuj Golecha-led Venture Catalysts back in 2017. Its management team holds a domain expertise in financial services, technology and real estate sector.
HomeCapital, Founder Lalit Menghani said, “We have achieved a very strong business validation for the network based home down payment assistance business model for solving the key problem for first time home buyers. We will continue to build the network exponentially and accelerate the housing sector”.
The program benefits the entire real estate ecosystem with its network approach with increased target market and better risk management. The program reduces the customer acquisition costs for real estate developers, better loan to value ratios for the Home Loan Companies and a zero-interest burden for home buyers.
There are very few private companies globally addressing the challenge of housing affordability. Each of them is following a differentiated model to address the problem. This sector has seen very sharp interest by the VC industry recently. Most notable transactions include a $30 mn fund raise by US based Divvy in a round led by Andresson Horowitz, $40 mn Series B by Unison and Landed, a Y combinator incubated company that completed a $7 mn round with participation by Zuckerberg Foundation. Draper Fisher Juvertson also led an earlier round in a US based company Loftium, addressing the down payment problem.
