Online home rental network NestAway is betting big on new concepts of renting such as student housing and co-living spaces and plans to onboard one million tenants in the next five years.
Currently, NestAway has more than 36,000 tenants and 17,000 houses in its network. Apart from providing furnished homes, NestAway is also planning to introduce ‘Smart Homes’ by launching the Smart Lock service for all homes. Smart Lock is a safety locking system that will ensure security for people staying in NestAway homes and especially for women. This service will be available on NestAway app on both Android & iOS devices. NestAway homes are present across areas including Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad, Ghaziabad and Delhi.
Another area of focus for NestAway will be student housing. With 10.4 million migrant student population and only 6.1 million beds as the current official supply, there is an increase in demand for student housing that is growing day by day. Cashing in on this opportunity, NestAway, is strongly focusing on student housing and aims to start operations with Kota, Rajasthan followed by Delhi (North Campus) and Bangalore by July. NestAway is also looking at expanding PAN India and there are conversations across the country with progressive builders for exclusive properties year marked for students.
One of the focus for the brand is also the concept of co-living, wherein NestAway takes up the entire building including the shared facilities such as gym, libraries, common areas, game room, among others. Through this concept, NestAway is trying to create a community where the members can share common interests engage in yoga/salsa classes, have talk sessions from seasoned entrepreneurs/sportspersons, and promote start-ups and collaboration, among others.
“We are striving hard every single day to create an India where "no city is a stranger," and nobody is made to feel like an outsider. With that mission in mind, we are expanding multi-fold and plan to onboard one million tenants in the next five years. We will move forward with the single goal of building a better social infrastructure in the country”, said Jitendra Jagadev, COO and Co-Founder, NestAway Technologies Pvt Ltd.
Having started operations in 2015, NestAway has so far raised $94.2 million in funding by investors such as Tiger Global, IDG Ventures, Ratan Tata, Yuri Milner and Goldman Sachs. NestAway claims to be currently doing over $4 million (Rs 26 crore) a month in rentals and is looking at 8-10 top cities, where they can have a greater penetration in the market. NestAway is currently aiming at about 50,000 houses by 2020 to break even.