While CEOs who secure more than $100 million (US) in funding might be tempted to embark on a spending spree to press on into new markets, Property Finder’s chief executive officer and founder said his latest investment round will see the portal solidifying its brand in its eight existing territories.

With the announcement on Monday that growth equity firm General Atlantic had led a $120 million investment round into the Dubai-based tech company, which also includes one of the brand’s existing shareholders Vostok New Ventures, the next obvious steps would seem to be where will Property Finder go next? And when will it consider proceeding initial public offering?

Nowhere else yet, and not yet, are the answers, according to CEO Michael Lahyani.

“When you can raise money privately from amazing investors like General Atlantic without having to deal with the market analysts and the quarterly reporting, there is not such a rush to go to IPO,” he told Zawya in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

“There is no longer the rush that there was back in the day. You can look at companies like Uber and Airbnb that are still private, there is still access to capital privately.

“Being IPO-ready is a great exercise, and it is something we are already doing for our own sanity. But IPO is something for when you cannot find someone who is going to pay your expected value in the private market, you say ‘let’s go and get that in the public market’. So far, it’s not an imminent focus.”

Lahyani declined to give a specific value to the company, which was founded 11 years ago in Dubai, although a Reuters report suggested that it was close to $500 million, having previously been valued at $200 million in 2016.

He said Property Finder has doubled in team size in three years, while traffic and revenue has tripled during the same period.

The most recent funding round comes at the end of a six-month long process and a relationship with General Atlantic that dates back several years, he said.

“They are extremely experienced tech growth entrepreneur,” said Lahyani. “They have backed companies like Facebook, Airbnb, some of the biggest names in in tech, and they know classified or marketplace.

“It’s important that people understand not only tech but marketplace, we are a different breed than e-commerce and other types of internet business.

“I have known them for the past four years, they have been regularly in contact with us, they’ve been looking at the business. It’s a relationship that takes time to build. They were the best fit for what we want to achieve.”

The latest funding follows rounds in 2012, and 2015, and Lahyani said that some of the funding is being used to pay smaller shareholders from 2012 who are exiting during this round, while those that invested in 2015 are all retaining stakes in the company.

Propertyfinder currently operates in the UAE, Egypt, Saudi, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon and Morocco, and most recently entered the Turkish market in partnership with conglomerate Dogus Group last year.  For the time being, he said, the company’s focus would be on solidifying its presence in its eight existing markets.

“We are just getting started in Egypt and Saudi, in terms of the work that is to be done there,” he said. “Look how long it took us to build propertyfinder.ae

“It’s been 13 years since I started this journey, 11 years under the Property Finder brand.. We want to make sure we become number one in every one of our markets.

“I am not ruling out that we might go to a new market one day, but there is a lot more growth to be created in our existing markets than there is in other markets.”

The focus for now will be on increasing transparency in the real estate market and using the portal’s tools to increase efficiency, as well as raising standards in the market, he said.

“We are going to build some amazing products. More than building products, it’s bringing more accuracy and transparency to the users, and also market data and information to our paying customers who want to understand what is happening in the market, with transparency on both ends, so that a transaction can happen faster and quicker, so that is going to be a big part of where we are going to be investing.”

The way to improve transparency, he said, is to build on existing products such as Property Finder’s verified listings mechanism, under which agents have to show proof that they have access to a property’s landlord and that that it is still available before it can be listed.

He added: “The way to do this is to ask more of the brokers. This is something we can’t do overnight, as at the end of the day, they are our paying customers. They have to see the value of doing that, and they do, good brokers see the value, as they also want a cleaner market and to raise the standards.”

Further reading:

(Reporting by Imogen Lillywhite; Editing by Michael Fahy)

(Imogen.lillywhite@refinitiv.com)

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