RentMyStay: An online platform for renting home for any duration

 

RentMyStay is a Bangalore based startup founded by Kiran Nagarajappa, and Rakesh Kamble. Check out their journey as founders.

 

During initial days the challenge was to make owners understand that they can earn better revenues and it required persistence and patience. As said before it is an online platform that makes renting a place for a short duration to long duration hassle free. 

 

 

Give a brief info about your startup?

RentMyStay is an online platform to rent place for any duration. We want to make the whole renting process as simple as check-in to a hotel. We provide a variety of options ranging from fully furnished apartments, villas, rooms to independent homes.  We put a full stop to all the impediments you face while leasing space.

RentMyStay today is pioneer in flexi rental model, where one could rent a home for flexible duration with all house-hold things taken care of. This will define the future of renting. Property owners could partner with us to earn good returns and continued occupancy through flexi renting.

It’s a new concept and requires educating people in rental and travel domain. Where ever you go now you could rent a place effortlessly and live like a local be it for just few months or for multiple years!  During initial days the challenge was to make owners understand that they can earn better revenues and it required persistence and patience. As said before it is an online platform that makes renting a place for a short duration to long duration hassle free. The process is as simple as checking into a hotel while providing the comforts of home. All our properties are at least 3 times bigger and 40% cheaper than a budget hotel. Presently we are operating across three major locations in India including Bangalore, Pune, and Hyderabad. Bangalore being the head office, we are managing more than 1000 Flagship properties across 20 different locations. We also help local service apartments to list with us and are currently partnering with over 5000 properties across places.

 

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

While on a casual stroll with my co-founder Rakesh want to rent a place for 2-3 months to stay closer to his under construction house to oversee the final finishes, but realized how difficult it was to get a place for such short term. A series of such instances sparked an idea resulting in this dream enterprise.

We initially started with cataloguing unsold apartments, ready-to-occupy independent homes along with aggregating service apartments. While doing so, we witnessed a huge delta between rental space and service apartments which, according to us, fell under same domain.

Our research team observed that clients were unhappy with the traditional method of paying huge premium for service apartments. This boomed the idea of pioneering fully furnished, do-it-yourself model of renting. Soon, this boomed the idea of pioneering fully furnished, do-it-yourself model of renting. Soon, our network grew into 1000+ furnished apartments which we market exclusively.

 

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

RentMyStay was founded by Kiran Nagarajappa, and Rakesh Kamble. Kiran has 15 years of experience in Product Management, Product design, and software development. He worked on Large Enterprise application, Algorithmic Trading, and Big Data during my tenure at Hewlett Packard, Goldman Sachs, Reach360 and Sure Waves. And Rakesh Kamble has over 13 years of experience in Product Management, Product designs, Product transformation, and Software development. He was earlier associated with Wipro, Unisys, and Satyam.

 

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

We are based out of Bangalore. Bangalore is the start-up hub, many related companies, start-ups, investors located here this would speed things ex: furniture rentals start-up, tenant verification,etc  There is also a huge talent pool in Bangalore so hiring good quality people is easier here.  Having a big size of floating population from a business point this is an ideal place to start.

 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

As start-up founder I am paranoid about having delighted customers and ensure the company is growing. Given so many touch points we have with customer and having dependency on the owner for providing a few of the services in timely manner at times we are challenged. This also means our work is operationally intensive. To address this, we are constantly building tech tools and setting the expectation right with well-defined and documented processes.

 

Who are your competitions and how are you better than them?

As of now our competitors mainly Nestaway, zolostays, Airbnb etc. and we are very unique and better in terms of cost, offerings, process. We also have a rich experience in this domain that helps us understand the customer need better and building product that addresses customer requirement. We pay a huge attention to customer satisfaction and enable easy renting home in an easy way. Here we are the innovators of flexible renting which gives us an edge over others.

 

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manages it?

As a start-up founder you have to manage many things, there is never end to things you could do so prioritization becomes critical. , Ensuring the availability of funds and using the available cash prudently is one major thing I need to worry. Apart from that we continuously strive and have built a great team, empowered them to make decisions, ensured team culture that fosters innovation and ownership. Once you have a great team in place the company will start to run by itself. It takes time and efforts to build great team but the effort that goes into it will be very rewarding.

 

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

No, we are proud to say that we have grown the company to this scale being bootstrapped. It has helped us understand the value of money also make decision on how best to utilize the existing funds. After having expanded into Hyderabad and Pune we see a huge demand for the solution we offer, it has proved that the business has potential to grow into a multi-billion dollar. Shared leaving market is pegged around 20 billion dollar opportunity.

To grow the business faster we see the need to raise funds and expand this idea to more cities. We are now looking for investments.

 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

Placing the product correct was the biggest challenge we had. Since some of our customers confused what we have for a hotel. It took time and dedication to make them understand what we offer, it was through correct messaging, constant communication. We see our self has a real estate rental solution providers enabled by technology.

 

What gets you excited about this company?

As a founder it is very exciting to start a company with a young team that solves a customer problem. We have solved a real life customer problem enabling customers to find a great accommodation easily. When people write reviews about how we have helped them we as a team get really excited.

The whole journey of having started this company as a two member team to a 35+ member team is very exciting and satisfying experience.

 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

The day starts with a review of all tasks scheduled for the day. The morning few hours is spent in completing tasks meant by me. Then I sit with each team reviewing the progress. Any critical tasks that need attention are addressed during the day. As a start-up CEO always the day ends with more things to do, as we always have unlimited things to do in a limited time.

 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

I and Rakesh felt the need to solve a similar problem that brought us together. The initial hiring was some of the people who were in our friend circle. But Building an able team is a constant process; it only begins and never ends. We are constantly on the lookout for the best talent. And the company success will depend on team work so we currently have very energetic and creative team of 35 members.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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