Indian classifieds giant Quikr will merge CommonFloor's rental app Flatchat with its own messaging service Quikr Nxt and has closed down the Flatchat office in Bangalore.

The move comes six months after Quikr acquired the CommonFloor online realty portal, which in turn had acquired Flatchat in April 2014 and funded it to the tune of $2.5m.

A mobile-based platform which helps students and bachelors find accommodation and flatmates, Flatchat is said to have a user base of 300K users, including 10K in Singapore where the app was launched in 2015.

According to ET Quikr told employees of Bangalore-based Flatchat they can join one of its portfolio companies and move geographically, but not all the employees were comfortable with relocation.

Unnamed sources quoted by Inc42 say the majority of Flatchat employees quit with just a month’s notice of the office being shut down and received no severance pay.

Inc42 reports there were around 52 people working at Flatchat, of which only the technology team got absorbed by Quikr.

Quikr bought CommonFloor for $200m in an all-stock deal in January 2016 to deepen its real estate business, just four months after it launched its own home search business, QuikrHomes.

Post the acquisition, in March about 150 CommonFloor employees of were asked to leave the company and its office including co-founder Sumit Jainwas, was relocated to Quikr headquarters in Bangalore.

Inc42 says the closure of Flatchat comes on the back of Quikr’s move to consolidate its assets after the CommonFloor acquisition.

The report also suggests the Indian online real estate industry will continue to witness a trend of consolidation following a "proliferation of them in the last year" with "investors pouring money into them".

In April last year, digital real estate marketing and transactions services provider PropTiger.com acquired online property listings and classifieds player, Makaan.com, the report points out.

Similarly, Real estate advisory Square Yards has acquired three companies since last year including Singapore-based real estate advisory firm Luxe Real Estate and Oryden Tech Labs.

"With the slowdown in funding this year, this pace of consolidation is expected to be quicker", the report predicts.