Bengaluru: India’s community management platforms are increasingly looking beyond software subscriptions to unlock new sources of growth, with companies betting on advertising, financial services, hardware and insurance as they seek to deepen monetization of their resident base.
The shift comes as apps like MyGate, Nobrokerhood and Park+ look to monetise millions of users across fast-growing gated communities, where software subscriptions alone have proved difficult to scale.
Fresh off a ₹225-crore fundraise from Dharana Capital, MyGate now derives nearly 70% of its revenue from advertising, while smart locks contribute another 8-9%, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Abhishek Kumar told Mint.
“The willingness to pay for software in India is still evolving,” Kumar said, adding that companies therefore need to build adjacent businesses that create additional revenue streams instead of relying solely on subscription income.
NoBroker’s platform, NoBrokerhood, has expanded into home services, including at-home salons, packing and moving and painting. This growth also helps drive for financial products and brand partnerships, according to co-founder and chief business officer Saurabh Garg.
Nobrokerhood, meanwhile, is using its community platform to cross-sell services ranging from home cleaning and painting to at-home salon services through Zivora. Home services now contribute 30% of NoBroker’s overall revenues, alongside 55% from real-estate services and 25% from financial services, Garg told Mint.
Park+, which started as a parking and mobility platform, is now branching out into motor insurance. It expects advertising to make up 5% of revenue this year, a significant increase from nearly nothing. Rival Apna Complex chose a different path. After Anarock bought it in 2021, it transformed into the enterprise software platform Anacity, deciding that consumer advertising was not a viable option.
The divergent strategies show community-tech firms moving beyond apartment management into broader consumer and enterprise businesses as software adoption matures. Mint in March that brands are increasingly targeting gated societies because of their affluent resident base and better audience segmentation.
Community management platforms have digitised around 37,000 gated communities, a figure expected to exceed 70,000 by FY31, according to Redseer Strategy Consultants. India is projected to have around 180,000 gated communities housing 32 million households by then, with the addressable opportunity estimated at about $800 million.
No single playbook
While all four companies began by digitising residential communities, their strategies have diverged sharply.
MyGate has deliberately stayed focused on products that extend its role within residential communities. “We don’t want to be a super app…” Kumar said. Instead, the company has expanded into smart locks, which now contribute 8-9% of revenue. “We are already at the gate of the community, and now we are looking at the door of the home,” he said.
The strategy has also supported growth. MyGate reported FY25 revenue of ₹186.7 crore, up from ₹109 crore a year earlier, while narrowing its net loss to ₹15.3 crore.
Nobrokerhood, meanwhile, is using its community platform to cross-sell services ranging from home cleaning and painting to an at-home salon brand, Zivora. Home services contribute about 30% of NoBroker’s overall revenues, alongside 55% from real estate and 25% from financial services.
“We know where a person is located, what kind of property they’re looking for and what income range they fall in. We’ve built predictive models around who would be the right audience for a service and when we should reach out,” Garg said.
Park+, meanwhile, has chosen to keep advertising as a supplementary business. “We wanted the core business to be profitable first,” founder Amit Lakhotia said, adding that advertising should enhance rather than drive the platform’s economics. Park+ does get a lot of inbound interest from brands to advertise on its platform, especially in commercial properties.
The road not taken
Not everyone, however, believes the future of community platforms lies in building adjacent consumer businesses.
Anacity, formerly ApnaComplex, has gone in the opposite direction. Following its acquisition by Anarock in 2021, the company pivoted from consumer software to enterprise technology for developers, landlords, and property managers.
Shajai Jacob, managing director and CEO of Anacity by Anarock, said the company deliberately shifted away from the consumer-facing model after Anarock acquired ApnaComplex in 2021, choosing instead to build enterprise software for developers, landlords and property managers across India and the Middle East.
“Residential communities remain an important touchpoint, but we realised our larger opportunity was to solve technology problems for the real estate ecosystem,” Jacob said. “Our eventual focus is to become the world’s largest enterprise tech platform for real estate.”