REA India Appoints Abhishek Makkar as CTO

HIGHLIGHTS:

• REA India has appointed Abhishek Makkar as its new Chief Technology Officer. He will oversee engineering and data science teams, reporting directly to Group CEO Dhruv Agarwala.
• With over 19 years of technology expertise, Makkar previously led e-commerce initiatives at Expedia and managed global engineering teams at Amazon. He is excited to drive innovation in the real estate sector.
• Housing.com recently launched new property video formats and AI-powered real estate tools. REA India saw a 31% revenue growth in FY23-24 and opened its first global capability center in India.

REA India, the parent company of Indian real estate platforms Housing.com, PropTiger, and Makaan.com, and a subsidiary of Australia's REA Group, has appointed Abhishek Makkar as its new Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

As of today, according to Housing.com's press release, Abhishek Makkar will take charge of the engineering and data science teams and join the executive leadership of REA India, reporting directly to Group CEO Dhruv Agarwala from the company's center in Gurugram.

Makkar comes with more than 19 years of technology experience. He has served at Expedia Group where he was leading core e-com initiatives for the last VP of Technology role. Prior to that, he also worked at Amazon from 2012 to 2017 and managed global engineering teams working in diverse retail experiences and alternative delivery channels.

Agarwala said that Makkar's proven capabilities in scaling technology operations as well as building a culture of innovation fit very well with REA India's aspirations for the future.

“The real estate industry is ripe for technological transformation, and both Housing.com and PropTiger are uniquely positioned to lead this change,” said Makkar. 

“I look forward to working with the talented REA India team to build innovative solutions.”

The appointment comes on the heels of several innovative launches by Housing.com in recent months. In October, the company introduced two short-form property video formats Housing Shorts and Housing Stories followed by the launch of a suite of real estate visualization tools powered by generative AI (GenAI), augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) in January.

REA India’s revenue rose 31% year-on-year to INR 5.6 billion ($64.6 million USD) for the 12 months ending June 2024 (FY23-24). The company also opened its first global capability center (GCC) in India in September 2024 and recently promoted long-time CFO Vikas Wadhawan to COO of the GCC.