NestAway, a Bengaluru-headquartered home rental platform, has raised $51 million from a consortium of Goldman Sachs, UC-RNT and the University of California and others. Though the full details of the investments have not yet been disclosed, it is understood that Goldman Sachs has picked up $19million and UC-RNT $16 million.
Existing investors in NestAway, Tiger Global and IDG India have also participated in this round of financing. It has also been reported that post this funding, the project is being valued at around $180-200 million.
NestAway plans to deploy these funds to improve on the quality of service it provides its customers and also to expand the portfolio to include student accommodation going ahead.
“Our vision is to create accessible living using imagination and empathy & we have been humbled by the market acceptance of our shared as well as family rental solution. With this funding, we shall strive harder to impact not only where people live but also how they live and shall work on community housing and student housing in addition to our existing categories. We are glad that our new partners in this journey share our vision and passion to create unique living infrastructure in this country using design and technology," Amarendra Sahu, Co-Founder & CEO, NestAway Technologies, said.
The business model adopted by NestAway involves converting unfurnished houses into fully-furnished and managed apartments and renting them to pre-verified tenants. And they offer these properties online.
Nestaway’s numbers so far include 16, 000 house owners and 35, 000 tenants and they are present in Bengaluru, Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Noida, Mumbai and Pune. It has now picked up the North Delhi campus and Pune as the 2 destinations where it will promote student accommodation.
Niladri Mukhopadhyay, a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, said, “NestAway is at the forefront of using technology and a hands-on, customer-centric approach to solving complex housing market in India’s largest cities. We look forward to partnering with them to bring greater levels of convenience, transparency and service to both home-owners and home-renters throughout India.”
The startup has also introduced a new concept of “One by NestAway”, within which a group of people can hire a property together for a sort of community living and NestAway will create the right ambience for the group to live in. Besides the investors already named above, Ratan Tata and Yuri Milner are also investors in NestAway.
The business of home renting itself seems to be coming of age in India. There was no professionally managed home rental system in the country and now that these startups like NestAway and some of their competitors like Placio, Homigo and Stanza Living have come in with their models of renting out accommodation, the segment will see a lot of activity in the coming months and years.