Tag: coliving startups

CoHo: Best Co-living Space In Delhi and Bangalore for Millenials

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by CoHo.

Migration has considerably increased both within the country and abroad. The reasons for the same are many but the most prominent being, in search of employment options and education. Moving to a new place breaks the monotony and unravels a whole new world. However, finding the right place to live in a new city, is a difficult task indeed. Nevertheless, CoHo has got that covered.

CoHo is a Gurugram based startup that provides the best Co-living option specially designed to accommodate the Millenials’ needs and aspirations.

CoHo – Company Highlights

Startup Name	CoHo
Headquarter	Gurugram, India
Sector	Co-Living
Founders	Uday Lakkar
Founded	2015
Funding	$3 Million
Parent Organization	ZR Management Pvt. Ltd.
Website	www.coho.in

About CoHo and How it Works
Co-living Industry Details
Founders of CoHo and Team
How was CoHo Started
CoHo – Business Model & Revenue Model
CoHo – Funding & Investors
CoHo – User Acquisition
CoHo – Startup Challenge
CoHo – Competitors
CoHo – Growth

About CoHo and How it Works

CoHo is a tech-enabled platform pioneering the concept of co-living spaces in India with its managed apartments and villas for a hassle-free living experience for millennials. The company provides ready-to-move-in shared accommodations on a rental basis for young professionals and students in India. CoHo is currently operational in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore.

CoHo co-living spaces come with all services for hassle-free living like housekeeping, WiFi, DTH Cable, repairs & maintenance, etc. Besides these, there are provisions for self-help amenities like Smart Locks, fully-automatic washing machines for laundry, ironing facilities, microwave and induction oven, fridge, tea/coffee machine, etc. The online concierge in the resident app makes sure everyone has a smooth stay at CoHo.

CoHo has these 3Cs as its DNA –

Comfort – ready to use premium accommodations for a comfortable stay.
Convenience – forget about repair, maintenance, housekeeping, internet or power woes. CoHo will take care of it.
Community – You no longer need to feel lonely in a new city. Enjoy recreational lounges, fun filled events and sessions with like minded residents and be a part of the CoHo community.

The core belief of the team is to transform the way millennials are living today in tier 1 & 2 cities across India. The USPs that CoHo boasts of are its young and vibrant community and the technology it uses to make the residents stay in CoHo delightful.

CoHo community engagements are something which every resident looks forward to during their stay at CoHo. CoHo organizes various events, sessions and meet-ups for the residents, so that there’s no dull moment after work, holidays or on weekends. Community events act as another platform for young professionals & students living in the CoHo ecosystem to interact and engage with each other.

CoHo believes in heavily leveraging technology to ensure a smooth stay for its residents. CoHo Resident App acts as a one stop solution for all day-to-day engagement like customer on-boarding, fee payment, complaint redressal, privileged offers, community engagement, rating experience etc. Besides, technology forms the strong backbone of all back-end processes for efficient rapid scale-up. Both technology and community engagement in each CoHo space has been key to growing CoHo’s community both emotionally and culturally.

CoHo Residents can also avail a host of offers from their brand partners like Zomato, Beer Cafe, Max Healthcare, Fitso, Shuttl, VLCC etc.

“There’s TV and DTH connection, high speed Wi-Fi, a pool table, a foosball table, mini golf, PS3 and regular housekeeping and maintenance, so I’d say the decor and amenities clearly set CoHo apart from hostels or PGs. The look and feel of the space is young, vibrant and energetic. Patterns in the wall paint, theme-based posters, wall arts and quirky cushion covers everywhere.”

One has to opt for a meal plan that includes daily dinner and lunch only on weekends, as most of CoHo’s residents are young professionals who are rarely in for lunch. They have over 30 meals and the food is prepared by a professional chef provided by a third-party vendor. The CoHo team sets the basic menu, but it’s altered according to the preference of the residents. Regularly, the CoHo team reaches out to residents through the app seeking for their inputs and preferences. Based on the feedback, the menu is altered frequently to ensure the residents’ palate stays happy.

Co- Living Industry Details

The 150 million urban residents that it is poised to add over the next 15 years will make India the “trailblazer” of co-living in Asia-Pacific.

“Younger generations, fast evolving consumer trends, and the potential scalability of the (Indian) market is a real drawcard for startups and developers looking to enter the (co-living) market,” a JLL report added.

There are 45+ Million millennials (Age group of 18 to 32) who are living in cities with high inward migration. The market size is currently pegged at approx. $93 Billion. The industry has recently picked up pace and will thrive in the coming 5 years with more players and capital coming to this industry.

Founders of CoHo and team

Uday Lakkar and Amber Sajid are the Founders of CoHo.

Uday Lakkar is the founder & CEO of CoHo. He is an An IIM-Ahmedabad alumni, who worked as an investment professional, consultant and financial analyst across organizations like McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Ireo, Capital18 and EXL Service. His first venture, Zocalo.in, that went on to become one of the most successful broker-free listing platforms for PGs, hostels, shared apartments has equipped him the right knowledge that allowed him to drive CoHo towards leading position in the co-living space.

Amber Sajid is the Co-founder of CoHo. He has 20+ experience in Real Estate with Ireo, DLF and Barista before taking up Business Development at CoHo.

Currently CoHo has a team of 100+ people across functions of Technology, Sales, Marketing, Design, Operations & Facility Management.

How was CoHo Started

Uday launched Zocalo.in in 2014, which was a marketplace model for finding rental accommodations broker-free. While running Zocalo, Uday saw the actual and substandard quality of the spaces which are available for millenials. Uday realized that there is huge room for improvement in this segment which led to the pivot towards CoHo.

CoHo was launched in 2015-end. Uday shares several instances like that of his friends from IIM-A struggling to find an accommodation in India’s largest metro city for more than a couple of months simply because of discrimination based on community background; another instance that he recollects was when he was shunned from entering so many residential societies in Gurgaon simply because he wanted to stay with his other bachelor friends from McKinsey.

Even now we see notice boards saying “Bachelors and Dogs are not allowed here“. We feel that the overall quality of youth accommodations (for students and working professionals) in India is in an abysmal state with inconsistent services, poor infrastructure and no technology whatsoever.

There is a crying need for a trusted brand with promise of consistent services at affordable price points in long stay accommodations segment and the team at CoHo is trying to create exactly that, and the response from the market they have received till now has been a testimony to the same.

CoHo – Business Model and Revenue Model

The CoHo business model runs on an asset light model. The company takes assets for long lease, then add its signature furniture, design, décor and rent it out to individual millennials for long stay. Residents pay a monthly fee which includes all the furniture, appliances, recreational amenities, housekeeping services, WiFi, repairs & maintenance etc. Typical double sharing room in CoHo ranges from INR 10,000 to 16,000 across different locations.

CoHo – Funding & Investors

The CoHo funding has raised more than $3 Million in two rounds till date.

Date	Stage	Amount	Investor

January 2019	Venture Round	–	AdvantEdge Founders
April 2016	Angel Round	–	Calcutta Angels

CoHo – User Acquisition

Coho relied upon their previous company Zocalo as a starting point to acquire the first few customers and it helped them immensely to have a smooth take off. In their process of user acquisition, referrals played a huge role on Day 1 and even today.

CoHo – Startup Challenges

Major challenges faced are in terms of spreading awareness of the concept and trust building given that this industry suffers from deficit of trust over time and unprofessional approach from the brokers and service-providers alike. The problem is a bit more pronounced in markets like Delhi NCR in particular, which are huge in size yet quite an unprofessional market overall, leading to dissonance among young customers. CoHo is trying to exactly address this trust deficit issue by creating a trusted brand that promises and delivers high quality services & experience to its residents consistently given that this is typically a high-touch experience product and not an impulsive purchase for the user.

CoHo – Competitors

NestAway, StayAbode, Zolo and Colive are some major competitors of CoHo. Again, a huge segment of the market is still dominated by the traditional hostels or PGs, or youngsters taking apartments together in the absence of a systematic co-living space brand in India.

CoHo – Growth

At present, CoHo has expanded from Delhi NCR to Bengaluru. Along with this, CoHo caters to institutes like IIT Delhi, Pearl Academy, Indian School of Hospitality, Max Hospital directly as B2B partners.

Coho has been covered extensively by leading news agencies like CNBC, Forbes, Entrepreneur, The times of India, The Telegraph, Fortune, Business Standard, India Today, The Hindu and others.

It has also established B2B partnership with leading brands like Pizza Hut, Beer Café, Foodpanda, LensKart, Shuttl, InnerChef, Sutra pub, VanityCube etc.

Over the recent year and a half, CoHo has witnessed a 5x growth to 3,000+ beds with INR 24 Cr annualized revenue run-rate across Delhi NCR & Bangalore. They are now looking to rapidly scale to a pan-India level with 25,000+ beds in the next 12-15 months by building on the waitlist for consumers and deep data driven understanding of the millennial lifestyle.

The CoHo company also intends to expand to Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other Tier I cities of India soon.

Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

Who is the Founders of CoHo?

The CoHo Founders are Uday Lakkar and Amber Sajid.

How expensive is CoHo?

Typical double sharing room in CoHo ranges from INR 10,000 to 16,000 across different locations.

Where is CoHo operational?

At present, CoHo is operational in Delhi NCR and Bengaluru but intends to expand to Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and other Tier I cities of India soon.

March 19, 2021

By founding Oxfordcaps, these Women Entrepreneurs are raising the bar for Co-living spaces

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Oxfordcaps.

Millennials are on the top of co-working and carpooling. With that, there’s also a huge rise in the demand for co-living areas in and around India. This trend is at the top of current housing trends in the country and youngsters are all over it. With the vision of providing co-living spaces, Annu Talreja and Priyanka Gera came together to launch Oxfordcaps residencies in 2017.

Lets go through the Success Story of Oxfordcaps along with getting a glance on Oxfordcaps founders, funding, How it started, competitors & more..

Oxfordcaps – Company Highlights

Startup Name	Oxfordcaps
Headquarter	Gurugaon
Sector	Real Estate
Founders	Annu Talreja (CEO) and Priyanka Gera (COO)
Founded	2017
Parent Organization	Oxfordcaps Student Residences
Website	oxfordcaps.com

Oxfordcaps – About and How it Works
Oxfordcaps – Target Market Size
Oxfordcaps – Founders and Team
Oxfordcaps – How it Started?
Oxfordcaps – Startup Launch
Oxfordcaps – Startup Challenges
Oxfordcaps – Competitors
Oxfordcaps – Funding and Investors
Oxfordcaps – Growth
Oxfordcaps – Awards
Oxfordcaps – Future Plans
Oxfordcaps – FAQs

Oxfordcaps – About and How it Works

Oxfordcaps is Asia’s No. 1 branded and tech-enabled student housing company and provides a hassle-free and technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore. This venture provides a custom-designed and standardized Student Housing product with a full-stack model of services and amenities including Wi-Fi, laundry, nutritious meals, professional housekeeping and an array of events and activities focused on career development and lifestyle for its students. The projects and services are standardized within the Oxfordcaps brand services guidelines, providing a transparent, hassle-free and safe alternative to a market dominated largely by the unorganized PG (Paying Guest) segment to date. They operate via three sub-brands and cater to students across price segments including Oxfordcaps Premium Residences, Oxfordcaps Student Residences and Oxfordcaps Dorms for the budget segment.

All the Oxfordcaps residences are equipped with top-notch security features like CCTV Camera, biometric access and 24×7 security guards. Also, they serve FSSAI quality food at all Oxfordcaps residences. Oxfordcaps focuses on hygiene, taste, and variety when it comes to food. And they have a strong operations team, including F&B experts. There is a quality check at every point. For menu planning, the team takes feedback not only from the students but from their parents as well. Oxfordcaps also provides wholesome delicious vegetarian, non-vegetarian and Jain meals along with late-night meals.

Oxfordcaps – Target Market Size

The market size is estimated to be $15 billion with more than 10.4M students across India migrating to cities every year to pursue their academic dreams. However, student housing today suffers from a high level of fragmentation, lack of quality solutions, price transparency, reliability and complete lack of technology enablement of processes.

Oxfordcaps is addressing this gap and aiming to meet the unmet demand. The market in Singapore is equally appealing to addressing student accommodation needs of international students from the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

Oxfordcaps – Founders and Team

Annu Talreja and Priyanka Gera are the founders of Oxfordcaps.

Annu Talreja (CEO & Founder, Oxfordcaps)

Annu is a student of Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Gold medalist at School of Planning and Architecture and has completed a Master’s Degree at INSEAD

Priyanka Gera (COO & Founder, Oxfordcaps)

Priyanka is an IIM-Calcutta and School of Planning and Architecture alumni. The idea of creating a branded chain of student accommodation germinated while she was an architecture student in Delhi.

Oxfordcaps are hiring through LinkedIn, reputed colleges and industry references. Apart from basic CS qualifications like data structures, algorithms, and programming concepts, the team evaluates the candidates on their approach towards problem-solving. The final decision is based on the candidate’s overall performance and not just one skillset.

Oxfordcaps – How it Started?

The idea of creating a branded chain of student accommodation germinated when the co-founders were students and finally after their experience in companies such as JLL and Marriott Group, they had a more definite and structured approach to solving this problem that plagues over 100 million students across Asia.

Oxfordcaps is Asia’s No. 1 branded and tech-enabled student housing company and provides a hassle-free and technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore. This venture is looking to expand to 12+ cities and standardize our Student Housing product with design thinking and technology at the core of the experience. They provide a custom-designed and standardized Student Housing product with a full-stack model of services and amenities. The projects and services are standardized within the Oxfordcaps brand services guidelines, providing a transparent, hassle-free and safe alternative to a market dominated largely by the unorganized PG (Paying Guest) segment to date. They operate via three sub-brands and cater to students across price segments including Oxfordcaps Premium Residences, Oxfordcaps Student Residences and Oxfordcaps Dorms for the budget segment.

The Oxfordcaps founders come with international experience in managing student housing. The learnings from Singapore aside from their experience in managing 12+ Indian cities for the past year have made them more adaptive to the market needs. This international experience equipped them in designing spaces that meet international standards. Their focus on community building with regular events and engagements is highly appreciated and has a special affinity among students. The founder’s need for community building is deeply rooted and is also reflected in the way they include community spaces in their designs.

Oxfordcaps – Startup Launch

In 2019, Oxfordcaps announced that it is starting its operations in Bengaluru by acquiring 5000 beds in the city. This marks the Singapore based company’s foray into the South Indian market. Oxfordcaps has also exclusively tied up with IFIM Business School which is an industry first and one of its kind associations. The company will provide the best in class on and off-campus international standard accommodation for students studying at the business school. Oxfordcaps will also provide the best technology-enabled living experience to the students from 5 other key universities in Bengaluru including Presidency University, Reva University, R.V. College of Engineering, M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Christ University and NMIMS, in addition to IFIM Business School.

Oxfordcaps had also associated with Dharma Productions’ movie – ‘Student of the Year 2’. Student of the Year 2’ was one of the most awaited movies of the year amongst the Gen Z students. With Oxford’s expansion in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Dehradun, Pune, Indore, Bengaluru, Greater Noida, Ahmedabad, and Jaipur, this association helped the venture gain more affinity among the student community as well as position it as a preferred ally among our business partners.

Oxfordcaps – Startup Challenges

Student Housing product has never been looked at from the lens of design thinking and technology at the core of the experience. The market size is estimated to be $15 billion with more than 10.4M students across India migrating to cities every year to pursue their academic dreams. However, student housing today suffers from a high level of fragmentation, lack of quality solutions, price transparency, reliability and complete lack of technology enablement of processes. Oxfordcaps is addressing this gap and aiming to meet up to the unmet demand of 36 million students pursuing higher education in India.

Oxfordcaps – Competitors

This industry is not at all untapped. It has major players in the marker possessing cut-throat competition for Oxfordcaps. Starting from Nestaway, ZiffyHomes, StayAbode, SimplyGuest to Placio, YourOwnROOM, RenyMyRoom, Rentroomi and a lot more in the startup ecosystem.

Oxfordcaps – Funding and Investors

Oxfordcaps has raised US$10.4 million. The investors include 500 Startups, Times Internet and Kalaari Capital. Also, there is an ongoing discussion on Series B round of $50 million. The new capital will be used for fueling the company’s growth with expansion into 10+ cities and standardization of its Student Housing product with design thinking and technology at the core of the experience.

Oxfordcaps – Growth

Oxfordcaps has started tapping the opportunity and has clocked a 75X growth in less than 11 months since its launch in India and has expanded from 200 beds to over 15,000 beds to date.

Oxfordcaps – Awards

Entrepreneur India – Real Estate Startup of the year
BW Businessworld – BW Disrupt 40Under40 “Prominent change-makers under 40”

Oxfordcaps – Future Plans

By 2021, the company aims to redesign the Student Living experience across Asia with over 2 lakh beds. The venture aims to grow its presence in India to over 1 lakh beds across 35 cities encompassing all major education hubs.

Oxfordcaps – FAQs

Who are Oxfordcaps Founders?

Annu Talreja and Priyanka Gera are the founders of Oxfordcaps.

What is Oxfordcaps?

Oxfordcaps is Asia’s No. 1 branded and tech-enabled student housing company and provides a hassle-free and technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore.

Who are the top competitors of Oxfordcaps?

Nestaway, ZiffyHomes, StayAbode, SimplyGuest to Placio, YourOwnROOM, RenyMyRoom, Rentroomi & more are Oxfordcaps’ competitors.

March 7, 2021

SimplyGuest – Find the Best Housing Solutions

Today, with everything available on the touch of our fingertips, finding a house is yet a particularly difficult task. Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte, Mayank Pokharna thought of making it hassle-free and consistent experience. So in 2015, they came up with their startup SimplyGuest to make both the handover and handoff procedures of a rental transaction a conflict-free, pleasant experience.

SimplyGuest Highlights

Startup Name	SimplyGuest
Headuarter	Bangalore
Founders	Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte, Mayank Pokharna
Sector	Home Rentals, Real Estate Tech
Founded	2015
Parent Organization	SimplyGuest Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Website	simplyguest.com

About SimplyGuest and How it Works
SimplyGuest – Target Market
SimplyGuest – Founders and team
How was SimplyGuest Started
SimplyGuest – Name, Tagline and Logo
SimplyGuest – User Acquisition
SimplyGuest – Business Model and Revenue Model
SimplyGuest – Competitors
SimplyGuest – Growth
SimplyGuest – Future Plans

About SimplyGuest and How it Works

SimplyGuest offers fully-furnished homes for working professionals close to their workplaces. These accommodations are completely managed & rent is inclusive of monthly bills: electricity, water, 30-100mbps WiFi, DTH, unlimited LPG, maid services, repairs, and maintenance. The flats are hassle-free, where SimplyGuest takes care of everything form paying utility bills, providing maid services, taking care of repairs, replacing LPG cylinder.

SimplyGuest also takes care of finding qualified flatmates, their entry, and exits. Tenants can move to any house in our network when they change jobs at no extra cost. SimplyGuest also has hostels; these are professionally managed to pay guest (PG) facilities. Hostels are slightly cheaper, provide quality food, and also have lesser lock-in periods.

Customers who are predominantly singles can choose from private flats ranging from studio rooms, 1BHKs, 2BHKs, 3BHKs, or live in a trendy co-living facility. These homes come with add-on services like meal delivery, bicycle rentals, car parking, furniture rentals, etc. SimplyGuest takes off keeping the homes clean and tidy on a day-to-day basis.

The idea, in the long run, is to be a space management platform. Customers should be able to rent just about any kind of space: houses, garages, storage spaces, bungalows, stadiums, parking spaces, etc via SimplyGuest, hire additional services via the platform, pay rent, and walk out when the need stops.

SimplyGuest – Target Market

According to a recent PropTiger study, co-living in India has the potential to become a USD 93 billion market annually. Co-living is an umbrella term used to refer to student housing and PGs. Another report by JLL states that the real estate renting industry is majorly divided into working professionals and student accommodation:

Number of Singles, Professionals, Paying Guest Rentals = 15M
Number of Student Accommodation on Rentals in India = 10.4M
Nearly 31.56 million people rent homes in urban India (2011 census) = $22 billion

Relevant Read: PAJASA Apartments – Specially Designed Serviced Apartments for the Corporates

SimplyGuest – Founders and team

Subbu Athikunte, Ambareesha Athikunte and Mayank Pokharna are the co-founders of SimplyGuest. Subbu and Ambareesha, the brothers started SimplyGuest in 2015. Mayank was an early customer of SimplyGuest but liked SimplyGuest concept so much that he joined full time in 2017.

Subbu Athikunte is a software engineer. He worked at Apigee (later acquired by Google) before quitting to start SimplyGuest. He has worked on distributed systems, analytics, big data, cloud computing, UI, develops and nearly everything else in the field of large-scale software projects. At SimplyGuest, Subbu takes care of tech and product development along with supply acquisition.

Ambareesha used to work on civil and PWD projects before SimplyGuest. At Simplyguest, he takes care of all the ground operations from setting up new properties to maintaining and servicing the existing ones.

Mayank Pokharna did his BE and MBA from Nirma before starting his job at Practo. In his previous role as chief of staff at Cuemath, he worked on streamlining multiple business processes to drive productivity and sales. At Practo, he was responsible for creating and managing end to end operations and business intelligence processes. He was a SimplyGuest customer before joining hands with Subbu and Ambarish. At SimplyGuest he takes care of sales and marketing functions and anything that lies in between.

At SimplyGuest, they believe in value delivery. The core of the philosophy being every action should add incremental value to the overall business. They are a tiny team and let their software make up for the small team size. Currently, they are all working remotely and are on the field most of the time. And here, they treat everything as a software problem. This helps them find solutions that are more scalable and reduce points of conflict. The big vision for SimplyGuest is to become a platform for services that can be consumed by its tenants.

How was SimplyGuest Started

Simply Guest started as a listing website for certified rental homes. The listing had verified information about various aspects of the house, something similar to a used car in Maruti Suzuki TrueValue. People weren’t interested in it. House hunters don’t do things systematically. They trust they will get a good house. In reality that never happens. They’d rather stay in a suboptimal house.

SimplyGuest pivoted to listing PGs and faced different challenges there. PG owners weren’t open to upgrading their facilities with technology. However, during the research for this project, they visited numerous PGs and realized that they were nothing short of cattle-houses. Even if tenants were willing to pay a higher monthly rent, they couldn’t find a decent PG.

That’s when they decided to create an alternative to paying guest accommodation. Around May 2015, they rented a flat in an upscale apartment society, furnished it with everything a family would require, got a very good WiFi connection, DTH, LPG, made the kitchen functional and hired domestic help; it was everything one could possibly ask for in a house. People could rent rooms in a good apartment without worrying about finding other flatmates. Very soon, the flat was fully occupied and that was the starting point for these brilliant minds. This setup provided the best of both worlds. Comfort and privacy of living in a furnished flat and services as you get in a PG without any unnecessary restrictions.

SimplyGuest – Name, Tagline and Logo

Once they had the idea in place, they started noting down all the names that could describe it. Made a list of 20 names in a couple of months, out of which shortlisted 5 and sent a survey to all their friends and colleagues. SimplyGuest was the second most popular and got selected because they couldn’t get a .com domain for the most popular name.

The SimplyGuest team then went on and created a gig on Fiverr to create a logo for SimplyGuest. But they didn’t like the logo that was received. So they created something on their own with limited Photoshop skills. After some dedicated conviction, they got the logo right and it’s the same that they are using till now.

SimplyGuest Logo

Relevant Read: Grexter Living – Comfortable Coliving Spaces in Bangalore

SimplyGuest – User Acquisition

The easiest parts were done first; building the website. They didn’t have any houses to rent, so they took photos of the house where one of the founders was living in and listed it and marked it sold. But they still had to find a house to let out and also needed to find homeowners. Hence they started going around nearby areas looking for ‘To Let’ boards in front of the houses, call them up and explain SimplyGuest. After 10 unsuccessful attempts, they finally found an empty house. The owner was residing in a different city and they managed to convince him to let his property via SimplyGuest.

Finding the first customer was the toughest part. The founders would stand in front of the big corporates on Bannerghatta Road and distribute flyers with house details in it. It was awkwardly embarrassing at first, but they didn’t know any other way. Few people agreed to hear them out of pity.

few people agreed to hear me out out of pity. Only one boy was interested, but our first house was meant for girls. I made a list of offices nearby, started visiting them one by one; we’d try to meet their admin or HR teams, but nobody seemed to care. Had I built something nobody wanted? – SimplyGuest co-founder Subbu recounts.

It had been one and a half month and they were paying for an empty house. None of the marketing channels had worked. They had a few inquiries but nothing potential yet. They were losing hope and they were starting to think that they probably won’t be able to find customers. And Subbu was anyway not able to sell it and had a lot of free time. They thought, why not find a house for the boy who was interested earlier. They went looking around and found one flat close by; it was turned into a PG. Subbu was walking around the building checking the house, some guys staying in it mentioned they weren’t happy staying there; the PG owner had promised them something and hadn’t delivered; maintenance was bad and it didn’t feel good staying there. He explained to them what he was doing and they found it interesting and wanted to check out even though the only house SimplyGuest had then was for girls. They visited the house and loved the concept. Subbu asked them if they would rent it from him if he found them a good home, they said yes. And finally, they were excited.

Subbu came back home and started searching for a house for the potential customers he had met. Bhanu found a house close by; it was within walking distance of their offices. Two of them worked at VMW while the last one worked at Honeywell. They liked the flat and asked them how much it would cost. Subbu hadn’t worked out the details yet he promised them to keep the prices low and get back to them. Only part of the problem was solved but he still had to meet the house owner and convince them about bachelors staying in the house. Subbu met the owner and figured she didn’t mind letting it to bachelors. He went back to the guys, told them about the rent, after they agreed upon the price, he told them they will have to pay an advance as a token of confirmation. They were happy because they were getting a private room with an attached bathroom at a low price – almost for the price of a double-sharing room. They gave him a cheque for 5000 rupees. And Subbu had sold a house that he didn’t have!

The same week someone called him after seeing one of the sun packs – a small 2×1 feet display ad they had set up near the house. The caller was from Lucknow and was in Bangalore searching for a house for his younger sister – she was a postgraduate student in a dental college near Meenakshi Mall. They visited the flat and liked it. The girl wanted to move in next day itself; they were staying in a hotel near-by. In two days, two more girls made bookings.

And then they started listing properties in existing classified/listings websites. This started giving some leads. And in those days, even one lead was a life-saver.

SimplyGuest – Business Model and Revenue Model

Simply Guest lets house owners rent their flats via their platform. They can rent unfurnished, furnished, and spare rooms via SimplyGuest. They find tenants for these houses, help them move-in and take care of household needs. They take a cut in the revenue generated every month for the services they provide.

They have 4 renting models:

Rent houses on a fixed rent
Rent houses on a revenue-sharing model where they take care of finding customers, managing them and the owner takes care of providing services
A car parking marketplace
Co-living projects.

SimplyGuest – Competitors

Major market players have come and played this field. NestAway is one of them. GetSetHome, VivaReal, PGstay, RentMyStay are some of the entities having a great market standing.

SimplyGuest – Growth

Somehow, the SimplyGuest team feels they had gotten lucky to find the first 16 customers. Things happened too quickly from a hopeless state of 45 days without a single customer to 100% occupancy in the next 30 days, numbers in the spreadsheet were overflowing. This could be a beginner’s luck, and they didn’t want to get fooled by it. Even if they weren’t lucky, and achieved all this by hard work, they had to find ways to replicate this.

They also started trying out SimplyGuest advertisements on the traffic police warning signs. The majority of the calls originating from this were for BTM Layout, specifically Stage II. It became apparent that they needed some houses in BTM Stage II. Hence they started looking around for to-let boards in BTM Layout and onboarded a full building.

They installed sun boards, a small 1×2 feet semi-plastic board that you find in malls, in front of the house, and around BTM Stage II, these are different from sun packs. Since they had signed these houses and realized BTM is a hub for young people. Every second house had been turned into a PG; they thought they’ll be able to sell their new houses very quickly.

People started visiting the flat after seeing the to-let board in front of the house; they were having 8-10 visits a day. They had a free listing on OLX and Quikr and these channels also started giving some leads.

They then went on to open up a referral program; every successful referral would get Rs 2000. They also messaged existing customers about it and created a WhatsApp group for every house. A customer from House #4 referred to three of her friends; these guys were college-mates and wanted to stay together at BTM. (One of them was Mayank; he later became a core part of SimplyGuest)

The marketing channels they tried to find customers were helping them in other ways. A lady called them one day and wanted SimplyGuest to rent 4 flats in Vijaya Bank Layout! Subbu was surprised to know that she had taken his phone number from the sun packs they were using for finding guests. The flats were in the final stage of construction and they had already started looking out for customers. She and her husband showed us the flats, these flats were close to SimplyGuest’s previous properties, and they ended up taking the property.

Relevant Read: Find Your Preferred Room and Roommate with RentRoomi

SimplyGuest – Future Plans

Domestic house help in general, and cleaning dishes specifically, has been the surprise element that makes customers stick to a house. If they can provide this consistently, they can retain almost all customers. Houses need regular maintenance for long-term use, initial customers don’t stay put if the house becomes unlivable. Plus, if the commuting time to the workplace is manageable, people stick around the house. Scaling this business is not as easy as adding servers and staff; operations are the key. Scaling physical operations takes time and sustained the effort.

Spending on advertising will get new customers, but it doesn’t help to retain existing customers. New customers are a finite set, whereas existing customers pay recurring rent. That’s what they are currently focusing on.

Providing consistently good services year-long matters more than discounts. If the bed goes vacant for a day, the revenue is lost permanently. House owners may not want to absorb this cost. Simply Guest calls this angel-stays.

They operate in about 15 locations in South Bangalore. Unlike their competitors, SimplyGuest operates shared houses, co-living properties, and also hostels (PGS). This covers the entire breadth of home options.

December 19, 2019