99 Group Reportedly in Talks to Acquire Vietnamese Portal Propzy

According to a source with knowledge quoted in DealSteetAsia this morning, the Southeast Asian portal group 99 Group is in talks to acquire the Vietnamese real estate marketplace Propzy.

Propzy is an end-to-end real estate marketplace founded in 2014 that operates a sales and rental portal alongside a concierge service which combines logistics, documentation, and transaction services.

The regional business publication claims that Propzy is one of several potential M&A targets for 99 Group which recently raised a $37 million Series C round led by Gaw Capital Partners. The private equity firm also led ropzy's $25 million Series A round back in June 2020 alongside SoftBank Ventures Asia.

Since then, Propzy has struggled to grow its market share in Vietnam where it competes with the likes of PropertyGuru-owned Batdongsan, Lifull-owned Dotproperty and carousell-owned generalist Cho-Tot. The Ho Chi Minh City-based proptech was forced to lay off around 50% of its workforce in June and said that it plans to shift away from its marketplace model.

Singapore-based 99 Group is the challenger to PropertyGuru in its home market and the market leader in the ever growing Indonesian market. The company founded by Darius Cheung in 2014 was said to be in talks to be acquired by regional generalist classifieds giant Carousell before its latest round. Bloomberg reported that talks collapsed after Carousell's deal to go public via a SPAC merger fell through.

99 Group instead decieded to raise fresh capital and stated that it would be going on the offensive and looking to expand abroad as well as increase R&D activities.

Online Marketplaces has reached out to 99 Group for comment.