Rocket Internet‘s real-estate classifieds platform, Lamudi, which operates in 21 markets in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America, has closed a $7 million funding round aimed at beefing up its operations in Asia.
Currently Lamudi operates in five Asia markets — Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh — and it’s those markets the new funding will be focused on.
The new investment comes from a range of investors including Tengelmann Ventures, the investment company of international multi-sector retailer Tengelmann Group. The other investors, who are new to Lamudi, are not being disclosed.
It’s also not clear how much Lamudi has raised to-date in total, nor whether the $7M in new funding is a seed round or later stage financing. A representative for Rocket Internet declined to specify when asked.
Rocket Internet, whose startup incubator playbook focuses on taking successful ecommerce concepts from established markets and applying them widely in emerging markets where there’s an opportunity to build similar brand dominance, consolidated multiple real-estate services under the Lamudi brand last October — with Lamudi’s Asia CEO pledging at the time to “grow Lamudi very fast”.
Today, Rocket said Lamudi now has more than 200,000 property listings globally as of this month. Earlier this year the platform had 100,000 listings across all its markets — so growth is being pegged at 100% for Q1.
Commenting on the funding in a statement, Paul Philipp Hermann, co-Founder at Lamudi, added: “The announcement of this substantial funding for our Asian operations is very welcome and will be crucial in helping us to make better and faster progress towards our goal of becoming the market leader in online property in Asia.”
A Rocket Internet spokeswoman told TechCrunch that half of the 200,000 listings on Lamudi come from the five Asian countries where the service currently operates.
She also confirmed it plans to expand Lamudi’s footprint in Asia — but declined to specify which new markets it will be adding at this point.