Real Estate site: Lamudi celebrates 1st anniversary

Fast-growing property portal Lamudi today celebrates its first birthday, with the global real estate network more than doubling in size in six months.

Lamudi, a leading property website focusing on the emerging markets, grew by 116 percent between April and September this year. The number of listings on the website now totals more than 670,000 properties to buy or rent, spread across 28 countries around the world.

The property portal has over 6,000 listings in Ghana alone and continues to grow at a rapid rate. During that period, Lamudi Ghana hit 5,000 listings by August and has helped connect hundreds of house-hunters in the country.

More than half the property listings from across the Lamudi network come from its Asian websites, namely Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. In April, Lamudi received $US seven million in investment to grow its operations in Asia. The company is now the leading property portal in Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Lamudi was founded on October 13, 2013, by German startup incubator Rocket Internet. The property platform was launched in 16 countries one year ago and has since grown to cover 28 countries across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The Ghana operations were launched in October 2013.

Led by Global Co-Founders Paul Philipp Hermann, Kian Moini and Antonius Salis, Lamudi now employs more than 400 staff split between its headquarters in Berlin and local teams in each market.

Global Co-Founder and Managing Director, Paul Philipp Hermann, said: “Our goal from the very beginning has been to deliver a high-quality property portal in markets where searching for real estate online is a relatively new phenomenon. In all those markets we want to establish Lamudi as the market leader!”

Kian Moini,Global Co-Founder and Managing Director, adds: “House-hunters in these regions should not be overlooked; as the internet becomes more widespread, they are seeking out the same services that are already commonplace in more established markets. Lamudi is innovative because we tackle markets that other property portals have so far ignored. We expect Lamudi’s growth spurt to continue for the remainder of 2014, and beyond.It is for this reason that we believe our product has resonated so strongly with property-seekers around the world.”

Globally, Lamudi launched both Android and iOS apps during 2014, which have been downloaded close to a 100,000 times since June.