Bangkok--20 Feb--DDProperty.com
PropertyGuru Group, Asia’s market leader for online residential and commercial property, announced outstanding results for its Thailand-based portal, DDProperty.com, with strong emphasis placed on mobile innovation and developing its brand identity, alongside extending its market leadership position in the region with rapid growth in both revenue and traffic numbers.
2012 saw the official launch of DDProperty.com with “The 1” event held in Bangkok with 500 attendees from the media and within the property industry as well as the appointment of Jedsadakorn Na Lamphun as Country Manager, steering the online property towards success by extending its lead ahead of its competitors to further cement its market leader position in Thailand with a six fold increase in revenue and twice as many visitors to the website as compared to 2011.
Growth was also driven by initiatives towards building and strengthening the DDproperty brand through bringing the focus back to its key target audience: the consumers. This involved a major advertising campaign revolving around the tagline “DDproperty.com No.1 property website in Thailand. We make it easy for you to find property to buy, sell and rent”, to raise DDProperty’s visibility through outdoor placements on BTS public transportation networks, print and online advertising platforms.
In addition, the DDProperty website itself underwent a revamp to include an English version to cater to Thailand’s growing expat residents and English-speaking overseas buyers interested in Thai Property.
Mobile expand exponentially for DDProperty with the concurrent launches of the country’s first iPhone-based mobile application in Thai for real estate agents to manage their property advertising, messages and enquiries “on the go” as well as the consumer app aimed at home seekers to find properties easily whilst on the move. Both apps have since contributed up to 30% of all traffic to DDProperty.com and garnered close to 46,600 downloads since launching in Q2 2012.
“DDProperty.com displayed healthy growth in 2012 for all sectors of our business. Moving ahead into 2013, we will be continuing to focus on connecting and engaging with consumers and agents to bring them what matters most to them - anywhere, anytime and on every platform,” said Jedsadakorn Na Lamphun.
Strengthening of regional dominance
Consistent with DDProperty.com’s growth trend, PropertyGuru Group saw impressive results for a five year old company with increased leadership in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia and the closing of the gap with competitors in Malaysia.
These highlights include:
- Revenue doubled year on year as a result of a 50% increase in real estate agent subscribers to reach over 24,000 generating close to an additional 500,000 residential and commercial properties listings
- 95% rise in web visitors to almost 10 million regionally viewing 83 million property pages
- PropertyGuru’s mobile apps garnered almost 500,000 downloads, equating to roughly 1,275 people downloading an app to make 900 enquiries to advertisers who in turn uploaded 600 property listings every day in 2012
- Clinched 3 more real estate industry awards — Overseas Property Professional (OPP) Awards for Best Innovation — Gold, Best Media - Silver and Best Online Service - Bronze
- PropertyGuru firmly established Events as a new line of business with 15 property shows held across 4 countries, showcasing Malaysian, Thai, Philippines, Indonesian, Singaporean, UK and Australian properties - with over 200 properties sold and almost 15,000 attendees
- The PropertyGuru (TPG) newspaper capped off its first year of operations in Singapore by being named Marketing Magazine’s Top Ten Newspaper for Marketers and remaining as the first and only dedicated property newspaper in Singapore with 175,000 print copies distributed across 3,500 locations per fortnight and a growing readership of 50,000 online readers
- GuruCares, PropertyGuru’s annual outreach community programme, organized “Gift Life”, a regional blood donation drive held in conjunction with the Singapore Red Cross Society across 4 countries with 250 people donating blood, which in turn will helped the lives of up to 750 people
Fuelling progress with strategic investments
An important milestone in 2012 was the double-digit Singapore Dollar investment inked with ImmobilienScout24, Europe’s top property portal group and subsidiary of global company Deutsche Telekom. The investment is reputed to be one of Asia’s largest online deals for 2012 and serves as a huge endorsement of the future for online property portals.
The deal also reinforced the Group’s vision of expanding its online property portal share in the region as well as gave access to additional talent and expert resources to boost engineering, quality analysis, product development as well as online and trade marketing.
Steve Melhuish, CEO of PropertyGuru Group said, “2012 was an amazing year for PropertyGuru with performance completely exceeding expectations in all countries. I would like to extend a big thank you to our employees, customers and partners for the great support and commitment they’ve shown and I'm sure 2013 will be another exciting year. We’ll continue to create innovation services, our brand and improve the experience for our property searchers and advertiser clients."