Economic Times – Isprava Second Equity Fundraise
Luxury holiday home developer Isprava has raised Rs 21 crore (over $3 million), in its second institutional round of funding led by the Godrej family office, Anand Piramal, son of billionaire businessman Ajay Piramal, and the Taparia family office, founders of contraceptive maker Famy Care that was sold to Mylan.
With this, the total capital raised by Isprava stands at over Rs 70 crore. The investment values Isprava at about Rs 320 crore, a massive jump from the Rs 77 crore it was valued at just last year when it raised about Rs 11 crore from investors.
The four-year-old company builds and develops luxury homes ranging between Rs 3 and 30 crore across Goa and Nilgiris and is looking to expand its footprints, both in India and overseas.
“We have developed about 50 homes so far and we expect to scale this to 120 by the end of FY19. We are already cash flow positive owing to high margins of 25-30%,” founder and CEO Nibhrant Shah told ET.
Despite the real estate market witnessing turbulence through the past 18 months, Isprava has been an outlier having closed FY18 with Rs 180 crore in revenues, the firm claims.
The capital will also be used to launch a new business line in the hospitality network offering luxury homestays and homes for travellers, similar to an Airbnb model. The new business will start with about 150 rooms across Goa and Nilgiris offering Isprava-developed homes for the first two years.
Isprava is looking to scale that number to 400 rooms for the hospitality business which will see the firm develop rooms on properties not owned by it post the two-year timeline.
The new holiday homestay hospitality business line coupled with Isprava’s entry into newer markets such as Alibaug, Pondicherry, Dehradun and Sri Lanka is expected to help the firm more than double its revenues to Rs 400 crore by FY19.
Isprava homes are designed, furnished and maintained by the firm’s property management team on behalf of the owners. The firm also offers rental management as an optional service along with built-in ecosystem services such as hospitals and schools.
While the firm undertakes the construction expense for the properties, the land for the properties is purchased by a third-party investor on a revenue share basis. The investors for the land typically get about 25% of the project price with Isprava taking the rest.
Isprava’s clientele includes prominent celebrities across sport and cinema as also industrialists and bankers including cricketer Sunil Gavaskar amongst others.