[Funding alert] Hourly hotel booking startup MiStay raises undisclosed amount from ah! Ventures, others

MiStay, a Bengaluru-based startup that offers hotel booking by an hourly basis, on Friday announced it has raised an undisclosed amount of funding through investment firm ah! Ventures and a group of investors led by Hyderabad based ex-entrepreneur, Sumit Nagpal. 

Abhijeet Kumar, Founding Partner at ah! Ventures, said, 

“Hotel booking is a very large market and the unique approach of MiStay for inventory optimisation will change the way the hotel industry operates.”

The startup said it will utilise the funds to grow the leadership team and to build up the brand. 

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Sandeep Jaiswal, Co-Founder and CEO, MiStay, said,

“Travellers today no longer want to plan their trip based on the hotels’ check-in time. The hotel industry is poised to transform to meet these evolving travellers’ needs. This transition, however, requires disrupting the age-old technological ecosystem in the hotel industry and raising operational capabilities of hotels. We are building the entire ecosystem ground up to enable the flexible hotel stay and be the leader in this market.”

Founded in 2016 by IIT Madras alumni Sandeep Jaiswal and Pranav Prabhakar, MiStay previously raised its first seed round in late 2017. Later, the company pivoted from the initial focus on the B2B corporate market to the consumer market in mid-2018. Since then, MiStay claims to have grown 5 times and hit operational profitability in June this year. 

MiStay is currently operational in 100 cities with around 1500 hotel partners. The partner hotels of the company include many premium hotel brands such as The Park, Radisson, Holiday Inn as well as midscale hotel chains such as Lemon Tree, Mango Hotels, Mint Hotels, 1589 Hotels, and Treebo among others. 

“The micro-stay model brings a unique revenue optimisation opportunity for the hotels. Our product helps hotels realise their full revenue potential by unlocking the value in hotel inventory during the hours it remains unutilised. Hotels can in fact run at more than 100 percent occupancy,” said Pranav Prabhakar, Co-founder and CTO at MiStay. 

According to the startup, the average hotel occupancy rate in India stands at around 65 percent, thus the unsold hotel rooms constitute around $6 billion of missed revenue opportunity for hotels. MiStay creates a new demand of customers who require hotels with early check-in, short-stay or day-use rooms, which hotels can tap into to maximise their occupancy and revenue, it added. 

(Edited by Megha Reddy)

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