Lamudi is a property portal with exclusive focus on emerging markets, they reckon these are the untapped markets and want to capitalize on the fast adoption of mobile. With over 50% of mobile phones sold currently in these markets being smartphones, this seems to be the right time to go into the mobile first world with solutions. The real estate portal currently has, according to them, 400,000 real estate listings in the 28 countries they have a presence in. Over half of these countries are within Africa.
Today they launched their Android App which is effectively their global launch as the same app goes to all the territories. The app brings the functionality of the full Nairobi property agent. The app goes a step further in that based on your search history you can get alerts when something that suits what you have been searching presents itself. As a registered user, the app also caches your search data thus you can go on to access the site with the same data across devices.
The app launch follows the launch of the iOS app in four countries last week. The countries are Pakistan, Mexico, Colombia and Morocco. Lamudi has stiff competition from both the industry stalwarts in Kenya and investor funded others like BuyRentkenya, where they focus on the same market that is Kenya. Kejahunt, a Nailab startup also plays in the same space but with a twist where they focus on house sharing and finding of houses to rent.
