Zameen.com

Zameen.com (Lit: land, Urdu: زمین‎) is an online property portal in Pakistan.[1] The site lists real estate dealers, developers, agencies, and properties for sale and rent. The company is headquartered in Lahore, Pakistan and has offices in 13 cities across Pakistan, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Gujranwala, Faisalabad, Peshawar and Multan, and operates all over Pakistan.

Zameen.com
Type of businessProperty
Available inEnglish and Urdu
Traded asZameen Media (Pvt) Limited
HeadquartersLahore, Punjab, Pakistan
No. of locationsOffices: 30 cities Presence: 40 cities
Area servedPakistan
Founder(s)Zeeshan Ali Khan
Imran Ali Khan
Haider Ali Khan
ChairmanGilles Blanchard
CEOZeeshan Ali Khan
IndustryInternet & Real Estate
Employees1800+
ParentEmerging Markets Property Group
URLZameen.com
Alexa rank 66 (Pakistan, December 2019)
Users5 million monthly visitors (May 2018)
Launched2006
Current statusactive

History

Zameen.com was founded in 2006 by two Pakistani entrepreneur brothers, Zeeshan and Imran Ali Khan. In 2012, Gilles Blanchard, co-founder SeLoger.com (a French property portal), took up the role of Chairman at Zameen.com.[2]

Business model

Initially, Zameen.com allowed free property listings on its website, but shifted to the paid advertisements model in 2010.[3] In 2014, the company also launched its monthly real estate print publication.[4] Today, in addition to providing advertising space on its online platform, Zameen.com also offers exclusive sales and marketing services to real estate developers to generate revenue.

Mobile website

In March 2013, Zameen.com launched a mobile version of its website.[5] This was a move to make the portal accessible to a wider audience and make it convenient for users.

As of March 2018, the website was reported to have attracted more than 5 million monthly visitors, with 32.9 million page views across all devices. Meanwhile, the property listings on the website have crossed the 11 million mark, and the website has 14,500 registered agents. The company also has more than 1,000 developers on its panel, and it has attracted over a million subscribers.[6][7]

Urdu website

In February 2013, the site rolled out its Urdu version.[8]

Tools

Pakistan Real Estate Price Index

In February 2016, Zameen.com launched the Pakistan Real Estate Price Index. The tool was created with the help of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) professors.[9]

Plot Finder

In November 2020, Zameen.com launched a new tool called Plot Finder. This product allows users to access detailed, geo-coded maps of 2,500 housing projects across 38 cities in Pakistan. It roughly corresponds to 1.2 million plot and homes and accurately depicts the properties segmented and finalized by society developers and approved by the authorities.[10][11]

Property Bank

Zameen.com is also slated to launch a new tool titled ‘Property Bank’. The feature, according to the company’s Country Head Ahmad Bhatti, will “cater to tens of thousands of seller leads that go to waste due to market inefficiencies.”[12] Additionally, it will catalogue more than 25,000 properties presently listed on the company website that remain without any agency representation.[13]

The ‘Search Trends’ tool allows users to explore real estate trends prevalent in the Pakistani marketplace based on the searches launched for different projects as divided into cities, localities and sub-localities. This information is updated each month; rendered in a graphical format.[14]

Further, the product allows users to obtain a holistic picture of the areas that were the most popular with buyers and renters at any given point over the last 12-month period.[15]

Brand

Zameen.com launched in 2006, bearing the “Pakistan Property Portal” tagline as a part of its official logo. This logo inscription underwent a change to the more elaborate “Pakistan’s No 1 Property Website" in 2011. More recently, in 2018, it was further modified to read the Urdu transliteration of the brand's popular TVC slogan: “Har Pata, Humain Pata Hai” (Lit: We Know Every Address).[16]

TV Campaigns

By September 2018, Zameen.com had successfully launched four different large-scale TV campaigns promoting its website and brand operations. The first of these initiatives saw the company adopt the “Har Pata, Humain Pata Hai” slogan, which has since become part of its logo as well.[17]

In 2017, actor Fawad Khan starred[18] in a TV campaign titled “Humain Pata Hai Aap Ke Dil Ki Baat”, coming on board as the company's official brand ambassador. The ad received approximately 20 million internet views – reportedly the highest online viewership count for any Pakistani brand at the time.[19]

The company's 2018 campaign, popularized with its “We can help you find a house, but only you can make it a home” TVC tagline, again featured Fawad Khan, and proved to be the brand's most successful online production till date – receiving more than 4 million views in a few hours, and a total of 22 million views across digital landscape over the next two months.[20]

Sheherzad Kaleem, a documentary filmmaker, commenting on the company's campaign for Aurora (a magazine publication owned by the Dawn Group of Newspapers), observed in an August 2018 magazine insert that “Zameen.com has created an image for itself that forms an attachment with the viewer. It is the softer, more nuanced persona of the brand, and now when I think Zameen.com, I think family, values, achievement and aspiration.”[21]

Investment

In 2012, Zameen.com received an angel investment from Gilles Blanchard, the founder of Seloger.com, a French property website.[22] In May 2014, the company struck an investment deal with Frontier Digital Ventures and Catcha Group, after which Shaun Di Gregorio and Patrick Grove, the CEOs of these two enterprises joined Zameen.com's Board of Directors.[23][24][25][26][27]

In September 2015, Zameen.com raised $9 million from three renowned international funds in its Series B investment round.[28] Shortly afterwards, in January 2016, the portal's parent company, the Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), announced that it had raised another $20 million in the Series C venture round. In addition to Zameen.com, EMPG also owns and operates Bayut in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan; Bproperty.com in Bangladesh; Mubawab in Morocco and Tunisia; and Kaidee in Thailand.[29][30][31]

In February 2019, EMPG announced that it had successfully closed its Series D investment round, raising an additional $100 million, the largest round of fundings in the company's history. With this round, the total investment raised by EMPG went up to $160 million, making the group the highest-funded real estate tech company in the region.[32][33][34][35]

In April 2020, EMPG and OLX Group announced the merger of their operations in Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon, and the UAE. The agreement included a $150 million investment round led by OLX Group with $75 million, and the rest invested by existing EMPG shareholders. EMPG’s valuation reached $1 billion after the conclusion of the deal, making it a unicorn company.[36][37]

Through the transaction, OLX Group has now become EMPG’s largest single shareholder with a 39% stake; while EMPG will take over OLX platform operations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, as well as the dubizzle platform in the UAE.[38]

Events & exhibitions

Zameen.com organised its first exhibition 'Pakistan Real Estate Expo (PREEX) 2013' in collaboration with Government of Pakistan.[39] A year later, the company held Zameen.com Property Expo 2014 where over 50 exhibitors showcased their real estate projects. The two-day event was attended by 30,000 people, making it the largest real estate expo to be held in the country at the time.[40][41][42]

In August, 2015 Zameen.com organised a two-day 'DHA Lahore Property Festival 2015' in collaboration with the Defence Housing Authority (DHA), a leading real estate developer in Pakistan. This was the first time the portal collaborated with a private developer to organise a property event.[43]

In November 2015, Zameen.com hosted Zameen.com Property Expo 2015.[44] The event was visited by 45,000 people.[45]

In April 2016, the portal organised two property fairs (one in Islamabad and the other in Karachi), followed by a large-scale expo in Lahore in May.[46][47]

In December 2016, Zameen.com held two property expos in Lahore and Islamabad, followed by another property event organised in Karachi in January 2017.[48][49][50]

Since then, the expos have become a regular affair with prominent exhibitions held in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad every year since.[51][52][53] In all, Zameen.com has held a total of 16 expos, making Zameen Expos the largest and longest running real estate exhibition of Pakistan. As of March 2019, over a million people, and more than 1,200 exhibitors have attended the expos over the years.[54][55]

Zameen.com also made inroads in the international markets with its Pakistan Property Show Dubai, held at Dubai World Trade Center in October 2017.[56] This was the first time Pakistani property was exclusively featured at Dubai World Trade Center.[57] The event attracted a record 14,000 visitors—reportedly the highest for any exclusive event on Pakistani property.[58]

The second edition of Pakistan Property Show Dubai was held on the 14th and 15 September 2018; again at the Dubai World Trade Center. The event saw 60 exhibitors from around Pakistan in attendance, attracting more than 17,000 visitors.[59][60] This was followed by the third successful iteration of the event held on 6th and 7th of December, 2019.

In November 2018, Zameen.com held its first-ever expo in the Multan. This was followed by the company's now usual trio of expos organised in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad.[61][62]

The 2019 expo in Lahore marked a breakthrough moment for Pakistan's real estate sector. It introduced a number of technological firsts for the country's property market, including a demonstration of a 3D ‘property walkthrough’.[63]

Awards and honours
  • In June 2016, Property Portal Watch (PPW), a global authority on real estate websites, named Zameen.com among top 5 property portals in the world at the PPW Conference held in Bangkok from May 31 to June 3.[64][65]
  • In October 2015, Zameen.com was named among top 8 global property portals ‘to watch and learn from’ at the PPW Conference held in Amsterdam from October 7 to 9.[66][67][68]
  • Kashif Moten, a local journalist, declared in an article that Zameen.com was ‘Pakistan's first property portal.’[69]
  • The Express Tribune, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan dubbed Zameen.com ’Pakistan's largest real estate portal.’[70]
  • The News, a leading English-language newspaper in Pakistan, stated that Zameen.com has ‘revolutionized the online real estate industry in Pakistan.’[71]
  • Simon Baker, an entrepreneur and the top authority on real estate portals, recognized Zameen.com as 'The Pakistan Leader' in his blog post.[72]
  • In 2007, Zameen.com won the Best Property Award 2007 at the CNBC International Property Awards.[73]
  • Zameen.com won the Best Property Portal in the World Award at the CNBC International Property Awards 2008.[74]

See also

References
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