2 weeks or 2 months, RentMyStay lets people rent homes for short durations
Kiran N and his friend Rakesh Kamble came up with the idea of RentMyStay during a casual stroll. Rakesh told Kiran that he wanted to rent a place for two to three months so that he could stay closer to his under-construction house to oversee the final finishes, but it was close to impossible to rent a place for a short duration.
Kiran adds that a series of such instances led to the creation of RentMyStay. Soon his friend Nanjunda joined the team. "RentMyStay is today a 10-member team which works on par with the same objective and passion," says Kiran.
Workings of the platform
RentMyStay is an online platform that makes renting a place for a short duration easy and effortless. It provides a variety of options ranging from fully furnished apartments, villas, rooms to independent homes. Following the flexi rental model, RentMyStay allows one to rent a house for a few days to a few months.
Kiran says that it's a new concept and requires educating people in rental and travel domain. "During initial days, the challenge was to make owners understand that they can earn better revenues and it required persistence and patience," he says.
Challenges
Apart from this, Kiran says that, they encountered every adverse situation that goes into a startup business, from financial crunch to dearth of contacts, from shortage of client reach to stress. However, their faith and confidence towards the idea of aiding people to find best short-term stays kept things moving forward. "Team work and active participation of every member turned out to be the secret of our success," adds Kiran.
They initially started with cataloguing unsold apartments, ready-to-occupy independent homes along with aggregating service apartments. While doing so, they saw a huge gap between rental space and service apartments.
The research team saw that the 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, the network grew into 100 furnished apartments, which they market exclusively.
Traction and future
They are presently focussing on Bangalore, with all their furnished apartments located across HSR, BTM, Electronic City, JP Nagar. At present, the team clocks at around 2,000 nights a month with 20 per cent repeat customers. RentMyStay has reached a significant stage today by touching the 10,000 nights mark.
The team works with the owners on an exclusive arrangement to enable them to rent their homes for short-term guests rather than the traditional long-term tenants. Owner’s earnings are better than the rental income, and guests who stay for short term saves 40 per cent or more.
RentMyStay charges a transaction fee. The effective cost for a guest is much lower than a service apartment or a hotel. The immediate priority is to spread across Bengaluru and then move into new cities. The team is working to partner with food, laundry, and local service providers to help their tenants. They are also working with vendors to enable keyless entry for their homes and enhance guest safety and security. Currently bootstrapped, the team is looking for funding.