MUMBAI | BENGALURU: After months of resisting a potential merger, CommonFloor finally acquiesced. Quikr on Thursday announced acquisition of the property search website for an undisclosed amount in a majority stock-swap transaction, which will give CommonFloor access to the online classifieds firm’s vast customer base.After the deal, Quikr will be valued at about $1.5 billion (about Rs 10,000 crore) based on the share-swap ratio, a person directly involved in the transaction said. This will catapult it into the rarefied club of Indian Unicorns, or companies worth at least a billion dollars. CommmonFloor, which has built a robust technology platform for home hunters, was unable to raise fund or monetise its business model.But it presented a right fit for Quikr, which is pursuing a new strategy of building key segments as independent businesses. The deal values it at $100-120 million (Rs 665-800 crore), other sources said, declining to be identified. While neither company confirmed the number, that is a steep drop from a year ago when CommonFloor was valued at about $160 million in its last funding round.ET first reported about the CommonFloor-Quikr deal in its October 2 edition. Talks between the two companies had been going on for the last 6-7 months. New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Management is an investor in both the companies. The purchase comes just four months after Quikr launched its own home search business, QuikrHomes.The company said the two brands will operate independently, while benefitting from each other. The merger is expected to be completed over the next two to three months. “(This) will give CommonFloor.com access to Quikr’s 30 million consumers and harness the potential of the cross category nature of the platform, while Quikr-Homes will benefit from CommonFloor’s structured data and domain expertise,” Quikr said in a joint statement.A property expert suggested that the main problem for CommonFloor was its inability to make its service pay. “When monetisation becomes a challenge, then consolidation is expected,” said Ashwinder Raj Singh, chief executive of residential services at JLL India, a real estate consultancy. “Ultimately you have to build services that end-consumers are willing to pay for.Clearly looks like Common-Floor was not in the driver’s seat.” Pranay Chulet, founder and CEO of Quikr, in the statement said, “We see great synergies between us and CommonFloor. We both believe in creating businesses that are strong on growth as well as monetisation…” Sumit Jain, cofounder and CEO of CommonFloor, in an email to employees said QuikrHomes and CommonFloor together would have the scale, depth, breath and capabilities to operate more effectively and profitably.“The idea is to operate both the brands but having different positioning. We will go 10x more aggressive on CF Groups,” Jain said in the email, which ET has a copy of. CommonFloor Groups is a discussion forum and directory for residents’ associations to exchange information as well as handle association finances through the platform. Jain assured job security to his employees, adding, “The only impact (the deal) could have is that we have a larger canvas to work with and will give new impetus to bring forward innovative products.”Jain and his cofounders Vikas Malpani and Lalit Mangal had denied the merger talks on social media in October. Quikr, while not giving specifics, in its statement said the two companies had the same technology stack and that the CommonFloor team would have expanded scope across Quikr’s four other verticals to accelerate its growth.CommonFloor, owned by maxHeap Technologies, is backed by venture capital firm Accel Partners and Google Capital , besides Tiger Global, which owns a majority stake. The company, founded in 2008, has raised more than $60 million in funding. The transaction is the second consolidation in India’s realty classifieds space in the past year, following Proptiger’s acquisition of Makaan in April 2015.In December, ET reported that CommonFloor’s rival Housing-.com, too, had begun discussions with Snapdeal and News Corp for a strategic stake sale. Quikr, which was founded in 2008 with initial funding from Matrix Partners, has since raised more than $350 million from a slew of investors including Omidyar Network, Norwest Venture Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, Tiger Global, Warburg Pincus and Kinnevik.The company recently made two other acquisitions for QuikrHomes— A real-estate analytics platform Realty-Compass and Indian Realty Exchange (IRX), a mobile-first aggregator of real estate agents. The Benagluru-based startup also invested in street view mapping service WoNo-Bo in October. CommonFloor competes with Housing.com, PropTiger, 99Acres, and MagicBricks, owned by the publisher of this paper.