Amid Cofounder Exit, NestAway Raises $5 Mn From Goldman Sachs

Bengaluru-based home rental startup NestAway has raised INR 34.92 Cr ($5 Mn) from existing investor Goldman Sachs.

According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs accessed by Inc42, on September 12 NestAway has allotted 18,882 Series D1 CCPS at a nominal value of INR 10 and a premium of INR 25,151.87 per share to Goldman Sachs.

Prior to this in May, Tiger Global and Chiratae ventures invested $10 Mn, followed by $5 Mn from UC RNT Fund. Prior to this investment, the company has raised $104.2 Mn from investors such as Tiger Global.

NestAway was founded in January 2015 by Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Parida, Deepak Dhar and Jitendra Jagadev. The company is an online marketplace for home rentals that turns unfurnished houses into fully-furnished and managed apartments and rents them to pre-verified tenants.

According to the startup, currently, it has 39,600 tenants across 10 different Indian cities including Bengaluru, Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Noida, Mumbai and Pune. The company claims to be clocking over $2 Mn in revenue every month. The company plans to enter the women’s housing and senior living management over the next 12 months.

In July, one of the cofounders of NestAway, Deepak Dhar, left the company to set up a new fintech venture. He, along with his former Citrus Payment executive, will start a new company to develop fintech solutions.

Further, it is being said that there are several changes underway at the firm including expansion into business verticals and a more streamlined business focus between cofounders— CEO Amarendra Sahu and COO Jitendra Jagadev.

The company has also recently introduced a separate co-living cum co-working brand – Hello World.

In the past few years, India has been among one of the most active markets outside the US for real estate technology investments. The real estate needs of the country are vast and startups have only just begun to scratch the surface of the opportunity for technology-enabled innovation.

However, at present, the absconded founders of Homigo with an alleged fraud of about INR 20 Cr have raised concerns around trust in the coliving sector. By 2022, India’s co-living industry is expected to be 20 times bigger than it was in 2018 with the shared-living market valued at $120 Mn (INR 845 Cr), as per RedSeer Consulting.

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