Photo credit: ANIMUMBAI: Aurum will acquire 100% of Housing. com in all equity deal issuing 1.97 lakh shares, equivalent to about 20.5% of its enlarged share capital. The deal will raise REA India's (an arm of an Australian digital property company controlled by News Corp), holding in Aurum PropTech to 24.9%, while bringing property search, transactions, financing, rentals and property management under one corporate roof.The acquisition gives Aurum something it lacked -- a consumer marketplace operating at scale. Housing. com draws 5.8 crore visits monthly visits and has over 1.2 crore monthly active users. Aurum, founded by first-generation entrepreneur Ashish Deora, has spent the past few years assembling technology businesses across property transactions, financing, rentals, property management and software. Together, the companies aim to build a single technology platform supported by a common artificial intelligence and data architecture spanning the real estate lifecycle.Housing. com has had one of the more turbulent histories among Indian internet companies. Founded in 2012 by Rahul Yadav and fellow IIT Bombay graduates, it became a symbol of the country's startup boom as investor money poured into online real estate. Its ascent was followed by an equally rapid unraveling. A public confrontation between Yadav and the board, governance concerns and heavy cash burn culminated in his departure in 2015, leaving the company to rebuild under new management.Ownership changed repeatedly thereafter. Housing. com was merged with PropTiger under Elara Technologies in 2017, consolidating two online property businesses. REA Group later acquired control of the combined entity, shifting Housing. com from founder ownership to the portfolio of a global real estate technology company. The Aurum transaction marks another chapter in that evolution, transferring the business into an Indian-listed proptech company while leaving REA with a sizeable minority stake rather than a direct operating role.The structure of the transaction suggests REA continues to see long-term value in India's property market. Instead of exiting, it has exchanged ownership of Housing. com for a larger holding in Aurum PropTech, aligning its returns with the combined business. Aurum, for its part, gains a consumer platform that can feed demand into its transaction, financing and property-management businesses.Aurum said it has entered into a binding share acquisition agreement to acquire Housing. com, with the consideration being paid entirely through the issue of fresh equity shares. It said combining the businesses would create a single operating platform for the real estate lifecycle and improve property discovery, matching, pricing and decision-making."We welcome REA as a significant shareholder in Aurum PropTech as we build the next chapter of Indian PropTech, powered by AI and data," said Ashish Deora, founder and chief executive of Aurum Ventures."The real power lies in the data flywheel as Housing and Aurum platforms work together, every intent, intelligence, transaction, financing and living makes the whole ecosystem smarter, setting a new benchmark for how real estate is discovered, transacted, and serviced in India," he added.REA Group chief executive Cameron McIntyre said, "Aurum has strong capability and local market knowledge to operate the India business effectively. We are confident it will be in the right hands and is well placed to build on the strong foundations the team has established."