Home Rental Startup NestAway Acquires Rival Zenify

Bengaluru-based home rental startup NestAway has acquired residential rental management company Zenify, run by parent company City Synapse Information Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount.

Post acquisition, Zenify will continue to operate as a separate entity. With this acquisition, NestAway, in addition to providing homes to singles, will start offering homes to family tenants as well.

Amarendra Sahu, Co-Founder and CEO at NestAway Technologies further added, “We hope to disrupt and restructure the social infrastructure of housing for both singles and families in times to come.”

Zenify is based in Bengaluru and was founded in 2012 by IIT Madras graduates – Sudarshan Purohit, Ankur Agarwal, and Kailash Rath. The company leverages its technology, analytics and design to provide assured rentals and in-depth property management services. Its ZRP (Zenify Rental Price) feature provides fixed rental price for each property that is available for rent based on localities and demands, enabling standardisation for home rentals.

In May 2016, it traised $900K in Pre-Series A round of funding from high net-worth individuals (HNIs). At the time, the startup listed over 1,700 properties available for rent across Bengaluru, with plans to scale the business across other major cities in India. Prior to that, it also raised angel funding from Atul Jalan and Gana Yantrika Systems in 2015.

“With the coming together of the two biggest players in the real estate services segment, we will leap ahead of the competition. By making the entire system transparent and value driven, and with a strong underlying philosophy of ‘homes that do not discriminate,’ NestAway and Zenify will work together to create a strong home rental ecosystem in India.” said Ankur Agarwal, co-founder at Zenify.

NestAway was founded by Amarendra Sahu, Smruti Parida, Deepak Dhar and Jitendra Jagadev in January 2015. It is an online marketplace for home rentals that turns unfurnished houses into fully-furnished and managed apartments and rents them to pre-verified tenants. It currently operates in Bengaluru, NCR, Pune, Hyderabad, and Mumbai with over 10,000 homes under management.

NestAway has to date raised over $43 Mn and is backed by marquee investors such as Ratan Tata, Yuri Milner, Tiger Global, and IDG. In April 2016,  NestAway raised $30 Mn (INR 200 Cr) in a major funding round led by Tiger Global, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner-backed fund Apoletto Asia, Flipkart official Sujeet Kumar and IDG Ventures.

Other startups in this segment include Homigo, Zocalo, NoBroker among others. Also, there are indirect players in the space offering Rental as one of their verticals including Quikr, 99acres, Magicbricks, etc.

Despite 2016 being termed as a ‘winter year’ for startup investments, online real estate in India saw a few major deals. Apart from NestAway’s $30 Mn raise, Gurugram-based property search aggregator Square Yards raised $12 Mn from the private equity arm of Reliance Group. Online classifieds portal Quikr acquired real estate portal Commonfloor  for $200 Mn in January 2016 and Grabhouse for an undisclosed amount. via its real estate arm QuickerHomes, in November 2016.

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