Can Square Yards’ Fintech Growth Engine Drive Its Ipo Ambitions?

As Square Yards gears up for a potential $250-300 Mn IPO, the proptech startup is betting on a playbook that goes far beyond property listings and search.

The strategy now appears to be paying off. In FY26, the company reported a positive EBITDA of ₹176 Cr, marking six consecutive quarters of operational profitability, while revenue surged 48% to ₹2,086 Cr. Its fintech arm, Urban Money, has emerged as the bigger growth engine, contributing nearly 60% of total revenue and overtaking the core real estate business.

Backed by more than $114 Mn in funding from investors such as Reliance Group, ADM Capital and Bennett Coleman & Co Ltd (BCCL), Square Yards recently raised $35 Mn from South Korean venture fund Smilegate VC at a pre-money valuation of $900 Mn. 

The company is now in the process of appointing bankers for its planned public listing, which it aims to pursue by 2027-28. “We are in a formidable position to go public by next year,” CFO Piyush Bothra told Inc42 in an exclusive interaction.

Founded in 2014 by Tanuj Shori and Kanika Gupta Shori, Square Yards competes with players such as NoBroker, MagicBricks and 99acres. But unlike most proptech platforms that monetise property discovery, Square Yards is building a business around monetising the customer across multiple services long after the initial transaction.

Inc42 spoke to the company to understand how Square Yards is crafting this narrative ahead of its anticipated public market debut.

Square Yards’ Fintech Bet

A key pillar of Square Yards’ growth story has been the rapid rise of Urban Money. What started as a home loan distribution business has now evolved into a broader financial services platform offering home loans, loans against property, business loans and personal loans. Mortgage loans, however, dominate the business, accounting for 86% of the vertical’s gross transaction value (GTV) of ₹87,831 Cr in FY26.

While the margins in loan distribution are relatively lower, the business has emerged as the company’s biggest revenue engine. “Our take rate on a blended basis is 1.5% in this business, and 60% of our revenue now comes from loan origination, while only 30% comes from real estate services,” said Bothra.

Unlike traditional lenders, Square Yards does not lend from its own balance sheet. Instead, it operates as a distribution platform with partnerships across more than 95 banks, NBFCs and financial institutions. According to Bothra, the company is among the largest sourcing partners for most major private banks and NBFCs in India.

“When we started, it was home loans and mortgages only. Then we diversified to include unsecured loans in the mix, which is almost 15% of the GTV today. This year, we are planning to launch mutual fund distribution through our platform. We are also in the process of getting a licence for insurance broking and we’ll soon start distributing insurance also. The idea is it should evolve as an independent financial services distribution powerhouse rather than just be an ancillary to Square Yards’ business,” Bothra said. 

The critical foundation of Urban Money has been Square Yards’ network of microentrepreneurs – brokers, insurance agents, and advisors who form a B2B2C distribution network, acting as intermediaries to distribute the company’s financial products. The company currently has around 70,000 active partners on its platform. 

“The strength of this partner network has enabled a 55% attach rate for home loans,” the executive said. Simply put, more than half of the customers transacting properties through Square Yards end up taking a loan through the company itself. 

“Earlier, when the same broker would sell a ₹1 Cr home, he would make a 1% commission or about ₹1 Lakh. Now he’s able to earn an additional ₹60,000-₹65,000 on the home loan alone,” said Bothra. 

Building Blocks Of Square Yards’ Growth Story

While the rapid growth of its fintech business has fuelled Square Yards’ top line, the company attributes its journey to profitability largely to operating leverage. 

As the business scales, fixed costs and overheads get distributed across a larger revenue base. But for Square Yards, a bigger driver of margin expansion has been improving workforce productivity.

“At a company level, even with the mix of new hires and everything else, we’ve been able to achieve a 12-15% productivity improvement. Our people are growing in terms of their output as measured in the transactions which deliver revenue to us, which is what drives the margin improvement,” added Bothra. 

It’s not only the employees who are crucial to Square Yards’ business, but its broker partners as well. In addition to facilitating loan disbursement as a means of revenue generation, they are also key drivers in the core real estate business, which continues to be a high-margin business. Its real estate GTV in FY26 stood at ₹13,236 Cr, which would put it among the top five builders in the country in terms of ability to move inventory. 

Notably, Square Yards also operates in global markets like the Middle East, Australia, and Canada. However, these drive only 12% of its global revenue, given that its revenue from the Indian market is growing at 57%, faster than the blended figure of 48%. 

Another aspect that sets the company apart is that competing platforms advertise removal of brokers from the process as a USP. On the other hand, Square Yards doubles down on these agents. 

“The asset classes that we are dealing with are high involvement and disintermediation will not happen in a way that people will start going online and without any human angle. That hasn’t played out anywhere in the world … The bedrock of our business all along has been these intermediaries, these micro entrepreneurs who are very critical for the ecosystem and they add significant value in the whole process,” said Bothra. 

With this, the pieces are finally coming together for Square Yards, which is now entering its next phase of scale and evolution – a listed company.

The IPO Roadmap

Inc42 had earlier reported that Square Yards was preparing to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) by the end of FY26. With the fiscal year now over, we asked the company what led to the delay in its public market plans.

“The plan was always to file based on the FY26 financials, given the significant uptick we were expecting in both revenues and profitability owing to operating leverage,” the company said.

Looking ahead, the company is looking to maintain its healthy growth trajectory. Square Yards is targeting another year of nearly 40% top-line growth while aiming to double its EBITDA margins from the current 8%. “Within two years, our EBITDA should be bigger than the revenue of some of our competitors,” Bothra claimed.

At the same time, the company appears cautious about rushing into the public markets solely on the back of recent momentum. “This year’s plan is to explore the IPO route, engage with bankers and assess where we stand before deciding the IPO structure. We believe we would be looking at a $250-300 Mn IPO,” he said.

From here, it seems Square Yards is staring at a crossroad. While few rivals can claim a combination of scale, profitability and an adjacent financial services business, public markets have proven unforgiving for several new-age tech startups in the past year. So, can Square Yards emerge as a public market success story?

[Edited by Shishir Parasher]

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