Hospitality Startup SaffronStays Plans To Add 1,250 Rooms By March Next Year
A hospitality startup, which manages and amalgamates listings for villas and upscale homes, SaffronStays, aims to expand its presence and add 1,250 rooms to its India inventory by March 2023.
The startup currently has 500 rooms in the high-end villas, upscale and homestays on its platform across India. Internal accruals will fund the pan-India expansion. “We touched 1,000 rooms and we consciously came down to almost 150-200 rooms only in 2020. Today we are back to about 500 rooms,” said Devendra Parulekar, the company’s founder.
He said the company decided to take a different approach from its competitors who were scaling up during this time. “We wanted to fix our quality and focused on Maharashtra only,” he added.
In 2018, in pre Series A round, the startup had raised â¹19 crores from venture capital frim Sixth Sense Ventures.
“But we will not be an online tour operator ever. And since we work with them, they are not our competitors. We will remain a tech plus operations company. Since we are a curated platform for listings, our customers don’t have to plough through thousands of listings like on Airbnb,” he added.
Achin Khanna, managing partner, strategic advisory at hospitality consultancy Hotelivate, said the younger generation is gravitating towards more experiential travel and stays and has shown keen interest in choosing homestays over traditional hotels and resorts in recent times.
Khanna said while there is no comprehensive study about these businesses in the market right now, he estimates between IHCL0owned ama Stays & Trails, SaffronStays, and Vista Rooms, etc, there are about 3---350 quality homes available for rentals. “In the unorganised, standalone space, there are probably thousands more.”
SaffronStays will onboard homeowners who have not necessarily given the brand management rights or leases in its new technology project. The company will not look at the day-to-day workings of the properties but will take a commission for every booking.
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