NEW DELHI: In the first large consolidation deal in the online property selling space, Quikr Homes, the real estate vertical of digital classifieds platform Quikr, will merge with seven-year-old real estate portal CommonFloor.com in a $200-million full equity swap deal, said two people with knowledge of the development. The deal that has been in the works for the last six months will see the three founders of CommonFloor-.com—Sumit Jain, Vikas Malpani and Lalit Mangal—get one board seat. The three have also negotiated a two-year lock-in clause during which time they will remain with the portal and continue to grow it, said one of the persons quoted above, asking not to be named. “The merger is likely to conclude within a fortnight,” he said. Both brands will continue to exist and operate in their own spaces and the promoters will continue to do what they have been doing within the company, said the second person. “With the merger, the two plan to leverage on each other’s strengths. While CommonFloor.com will leverage the traffic, brand and reach of Quikr in tier-II, tier-III cities, Quikr will leverage on the property portals expertise to sell. It’s a complementary thing,” said the person. When contacted, one of the promoters, Sumit Jain, declined to comment. A spokesperson for Quikr too declined to comment. The deal is structured in a way that the founders and investors of CommonFloor. com get Quikr equity. “It’s a full equity deal. The promoters are not taking any cash out. None of the investors are cashing out at this stage. It’s a full equity swap deal, a pure merger, which will make the combined entity the largest player in the online market,” said the first person. Exit for the promoters of CommonFloor. com in the merged entity will eventually come from going public, he said. The online real estate market has been growing over the last few years, and in a slow market many builders have realized this channel as an additional way to sell their property. CommonFloor.com had started operations in 2007 and is one of the better performing players among a slew of new age property portals that have sprung up in the last few years. Some of them have raised large sums of money from venture funds. In 2014, four different companies including PropTiger, Housing.com and CommonFloor. com raised over Rs 1,000 crore in funding. CommonFloor.com raised $30 million from Google Capital in January this year. Other investors in CommonFloor include Accel Partners and Tiger Global. Earlier this year, Rupert Murdochled News Corp acquired 25% stake in PropTiger.com for $30 million and later upped its stake to 30%. At this point in time, there is at least one more consolidation attempt being worked on in this space, between IndiaHomes and IndiaProperty.