The e-commerce company Flipkart partnered with Tiger Global, its largest investor to invest of about Rs 76 crore (approx. $12 million) in Nestaway, an online home rentals startup. Nestaway based in Bengaluru was founded by four graduates from the National Institute of Technology in Suratkal.
Nestaway is an online marketplace meant for the home rentals. It targets the unmarried professionals who are looking to find accommodation in the metropolitan cities. Jitendra Jagadev, the Co-Founder of Nestaway stated that everything from approving tenants, finishing the agreements to collecting rent will happen online.
He stated that the company will make use of the latest round of funding in order to expand this service to more cities and enhance its technology platform as well. Flipkart confirmed this investment, and an official confirmation from Tiger Global is still awaited.
Back in May, there were reports that the startup Nestaway is in discussion with Tiger Global and a few other investors in order to raise the next funding round.
It is become evident that the online accommodation aggregators will be the biggest bet for the investors in the future. This segment has started gaining attention right from the past few months. Flipkart bought a stake in WeHive and it also co-invested in the online freight booking service provider Zinka that is scouting for more buys. The industry experts view that this trend is the hottest one for now with the model adopted by global technology companies including Facebook and Google.
Regarding the trend of focusing a lot on the online accommodation aggregators, Raja Lahiri, a partner at the consultancy company Grant Thornton, a plethora of startups have new solutions and technologies. Only those companies that have such capabilities, the ones that are looked up by the larger companies do get successful as they will find a way to increase their business as well as expand to new customers.
