Dmgi, the venture capital arm of the company behind the British tabloid newspaper — yes, even the Daily Mail does tech investing!! — has continued its spree in data-centric startups in India after putting $5 million into real estate research and analytics firm Liases Foras.
Dmgi invested in commercial real estate startup Propstack a month ago, and now it is making a big commitment to Mumbai-based Liases Foras, which is a non-brokerage residential real estate data and analytics company.
Confused by that description? Not just me then…
Put into layman’s terms, it helps those in the industry stay smart and on top of trends. it does that by providing data on the commercial real estate industry in India to a range of players in the property space, including banks, real estate developers, government entities and more.
Liases Foras collects data from 25 cities in India. That spread, it claimed, covers more than 15,000 new real estate projects per quarter from over 8,000 property developers. It sells that data via a range of services, which include market forecasting, risk assessment, valuation reports and more.
“Residential real estate market in India is very opaque and Laises Foras offers transparency and unbiased data in the market,” said Stephen Stout, CEO of dmg Information Asia Pacific. “Besides the financial support, Dmgi — with assets such as Landmark Information Group in the UK — will be able to offer market and product experience that will add considerable value to the Liases Foras’ business.”
Dmgi has been on the hunt for real estate businesses in India, and particularly those in the field of big data and analytics. In addition to Liases Foras and Propstack, it put money into Real Capital Analytics — which also invested in Propstack; that’s called keeping it in the family.
Why does a newspaper group care so much about real estate and data? Speaking to TechCrunch last month, Dmgi India country manager Tej Kapoor explained that the firm sees data as a tangible commodity with real value. Real estate tech — which is booming in India right now — is just one branch that Dmgi has focused on in India. It’s other investments have included SkyMetWeather (weather forecasting), Asia Risk Center (agriculture) and iProf (education).