Hospitality Startup PGO Raises $2Mn Funding To Expand To 14 Cities

Hyderabad-based hospitality startup PGO has announced a fresh round of funding of $2 Mn from Ektha’s Sreeni Musani and IRA Reality’s Narsi Reddy Posham. The companies previous investors and strategic partners include filmmakers Sai Korrapati, SS Karthikeya, Sanjay Reddy and Anil Kumar.

PGO wants to use the funding to expand its property network and services into 10 more cities for a total of 14 cities with more than 90% footprint in India. Moreover, it plans to enhance the tech that powers its tenant-landlord matchmaking and targets 1.8 Mn online bookings by 2025. PGO currently claims to manage over 13K properties with 6.3 Lakh beds. The hospitality startup claims to have brought over 1.57 Lakh customers on board who have collectively recorded over 2 Lakh total stay days.

Founded in July 2018 by Hari Krishna, Thinkwise-owned PGO is a peer-to-peer hospitality startup that allows landlords to connect with tenants looking for rental accommodations. Besides residential properties, it also has coliving options for students and professionals. Most importantly, it lets tenants review each accommodation, which makes it easy for other potential clients to decide.

In its media statement, the company has also announced a new feature called ‘PGO Prime’ membership, which will provide multiple benefits to the users, including a 10% discount on all bookings.

An analysis on home renting trends by mProfile, a service for landlords and tenants on makaan.com, suggests that most prospective tenants prefer online platforms for shortlisting rental accommodations before making a physical visit.

In addition, the coliving market has become a new trend in the real-estate business to generate more rental income, especially in Tier 1 cities and IT hubs. The market is at an initial stage with only a few players available. On November 7, another hospitality startup YourOwnROOM raised $2Mn in seed funding from Lotus Capital and few angel investors such as the former president of P&G, Ravi Chaturvedi and US-based entrepreneur Narasimha Murthy, among others.

Real estate firm Puravankara is exploring the coliving segment too. The company will be launching its first such space, spread across 350,000 sq ft in Goregaon, Mumbai.

Meanwhile, NoBroker got an infusion of $10 Mn for its Series C2 from Singapore-based investment firm General Atlantic, in October 2019. Though the company is currently on its Series D and has raised $50 Mn in the same.