UAE's quickly growing real estate landscape

The landscape of UAE's real estate. (Image via Spacing.ca)

The owners of Bayut.com, one of UAE’s biggest real estate websites, have closed a $20 million series C round.

Bayut’s owners, Emerging Markets Property Group (EMPG), formerly Zamzama Property Group, made the announcement today, just four months after announcing the closure of a $9 million series B round.

This brings total funding in the last six months to $29 million. Not yet naming the investors they said in a statement that it comes from “a fund which focuses on frontier and emerging markets with over $1 billion in assets under management.”

With Pakistan’s entrepreneurs becoming increasingly interested in the MENA as an outpost for their startups, such a round will prove beneficial for the company’s actions in UAE. The country is also a favourite amongst investors also present in the MENA region.

“A very significant portion of the investment will go into the UAE in order to further strengthen our brand,” Bayut’s CEO Haider Ali Khan told Wamda. He added that a primary focus would be on increasing their market share. “We fully intend to realize our vision of providing the best platform to search for and advertise properties."

“This sizeable funding will be distributed between our operations in Pakistan and UAE, as well as providing significant capital for the group to launch well-funded ventures in Bangladesh and the Middle East,” said EMPG cofounder and CEO Imran Ali Khan in a statement.

Khan added that their aim was to “completely own the real estate space in both of these markets, so it was very important for us to go in with the right strategy and ample funds to do that quickly and efficiently.”