Times Business Solutions Limited’s leading real estate portal, MagicBricks.com, has won the Real Estate Excellence (REE) Award for the “Best Property Portal” for the year 2008 for its outstanding contribution to the real estate sector. This is the second time that MagicBricks.com - India’s No.1 Property Site, has won this award.

Mr. Naveen Luthra, Business Head, and VP, MagicBricks.com received the award on behalf of MagicBricks.com. The ceremony was presided over by Shri Vijay Kumar Goel, National General Secretary, BJP and former Union Minister, who also presented the awards in the presence of several eminent personalities from Government, Media, and the Corporate at Hotel Intercontinental, Connaught Place, New Delhi, on 24 May 2008.

On winning the award, Mr Naveen Luthra, VP and Business Head, MagicBricks.com said, “We are proud of the fact that the REE Awards have recognised our contribution in developing online real-estate in the country, by bestowing the best Web Portal for the Real Estate Industry Award for the second time.

“The REE Award not only recognizes the contribution of MagicBricks.com in developing the Real Estate sector in India, by bringing in an unparalleled level of interactivity and transparency with its innovative online solutions to the sector, but has also identified and honored MagicBricks.com as a team of professionals who have envisioned and created path-breaking products and services to serve the sector, creating benchmarks for Indian real estate.” added Mr. Luthra.

The REE Awards 2008, were also bestowed upon Parsvnath Developers for the Company of the Year, DLF for the Best IPO and Jaypee Greens for Overall Achievement & Project Award Of The Year-2008.

The winners for the REE Awards -2008, were selected by a jury of individuals who are pioneers in their respective areas, and were based on a survey done by AC Nielsen, after evaluating the reputation and achievements of the nominees.

The REE Awards have been constituted to recognize developers, builders and the real estate related organisations for their outstanding achievements in developing infrastructure facilities and promoting state of art designs & architecture. The REE Awards 2008 honored and saluted entrepreneurs involved in building and developing the new India.

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About MagicBricks.com

The internet has empowered and paced up our lives almost on every front. The emerging virtual world of the real estate sector is an outstanding example of the paradigm shift the internet is bringing. People prefer to search for information on product online before they actually buy it and this applies to property search as well. Online property search is catching up fast, be it a residential or a commercial plot, building, flat or office space.

Keeping with the trend, Times Business Solutions launched MagicBricks.com in August ’06, as a platform to bring together buyers and sellers in the real estate industry. Within three months of its launch, MagicBricks.com achieved the status of being the No.1 property portal in India. With its revolutionary next-gen services customized specifically to address the real estate industry it has consolidated its position as the leader in the sector. MagicBricks.com provides a common platform for all users, and provides a space for property buyers & sellers to locate properties of interest and source information about all property related issues in a transparent and unambiguous process.

MagicBricks.com offers a pan – India coverage of over 500,000 listings, showcasing the Indian real-estate market. MagicBricks.com currently records over 15 million page-views per month.

MagicBricks.com observed that the majority of people, in this business, were constantly on the move, and did not access the internet on a daily basis, but conducted their business over mobile phones, and thus the most valued services launched by MagicBricks.com, which further advanced its leadership were the Mobile & Internet convergence services, first through ‘MagicSMS’, and subsequently ‘MagicBricks Mobile’.

Through the ‘Magic SMS’ service, users can send free SMS through the website to sellers for properties and buyers for requirements that interest them. The simple and user-friendly interface creates a succinct yet comprehensive message that is sent to the person who has listed the property or requirement.

As a value addition to MagicSMS , MagicBricks.com also provides developers and real estate agents - ‘Property Leads on SMS’ – a premium service that offers instant SMS updates of new properties, listed for sale or rent customised as per the subscribers selection.

Not one to rest on its achievements, MagicBricks.com launched, India’s first Mobile Property Portal – ‘MagicBricks Mobile’. This small application (less than 50 KB), enables users to search for properties by property type, budget, and city on their GPRS enabled cell-phone. They can view further details of shortlisted property listings, live off the site, right on their cell phones. Users can instantly contact the concerned person by sms or phone call and the application stores the history of the contact they have made in past sessions, for easy recall and follow-up.

With such innovations, it is evident MagicBricks.com retains its leadership position with more than 5.5 Lakh properties live on the site, and over 3.5 lakh registered users, including over 55,000 real estate agents and more than 7,500 builders having their presence on the site.

MagicBricks.com also conducts Property Fairs, branded as “MagicBricks.com Property Bazaars”, which serve as a one-stop-shop for property-seekers to interact face-to-face with developers, agents and housing financing institutions, all at a single venue. MagicBricks.com Property Fairs are conducted in 4 different formats, Locality-Centric (e.g. Property Fair in Bangalore for properties in that city), Income-Centric (e.g. Luxury Properties for HNIs – by invitation only), Regional Showcase (e.g. Goa properties fair in Delhi), and International Fairs (e.g. Indian Properties showcased to NRIs and PIOs in Singapore, Dubai & London). So far, MagicBricks.com has conducted over 50 domestic and 10 international property fairs.