Bayut, the leading online property portal in the UAE, has announced that it has acquired the GCC
business of Rocket Internet/Middle Eastern Internet Group’s Lamudi in a landmark deal that will see
Bayut take ownership of all Lamudi assets in the GCC, including its portals in Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
and the UAE.
Middle East Internet Group launched Lamudi.sa as the first real estate portal in Saudi Arabia in 2012,
followed by Lamudi.jo in Jordan. In 2015, Lamudi.ae was launched in the UAE.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Bayut’s parent company, UAE-based
EMPG, also owns Zameen.com in Pakistan, Bproperty in
Bangladesh, and Mubawab in Morocco, and has business presence in Spain and Romania as well.
The group successfully closed a $100 million Series D investment round earlier this year.
“Today is a very exciting day for us, as we embark on a new journey to start solving real estate issues
for the largest market in our region. Our extensive experience in similar markets puts us in a unique
position to provide both clients and end-users with a highly sophisticated product that is built to
address their needs. We aim to be a partner to them in their journey of buying or selling a home,”
said Bayut CEO Haider Ali Khan.
He said further that EMPG aims to aggressively grow and establish itself as the most dominant real
estate classifieds solution in the GCC. The group currently employs a workforce of 2,000 people
across all its markets, and receives close to 10 million visits on its websites every month, generating
around 70 million page views and over 2 million customer inquiries in the same timeframe.
“With a network of our sites operating in the region, we are also very well placed to maximize
consumers’ reach and clients’ exposure across a broader region. Our brand name, Bayut, means
‘homes’ in Arabic and our story is a very local one, and this is another step in making our brand a
household name in the natively Arabic-speaking region. With our experience and ability to deploy
significant capital effectively, we are very well placed to solve problems in the real estate markets of
the region through technology,” Khan said.
“Bayut has always focused on providing the most locally-tuned solution to the market, and the
intention behind this acquisition is to take the group’s philosophy to the greater GCC region, with a
focus on Saudi Arabia,” he added.