MiStay Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, which runs online hotel reservations startup, has raised an undisclosed amount from a clutch of investors including the Mumbai-based ah! Ventures.
The company said it has also raised the funding from a group of investors led by Sumit Nagpal, a Hyderabad-based entrepreneur.
Bengaluru-based MiStay said it will use the funds to expand its footprint and grow its leadership team.
Sandeep Jaiswal, co-founder and chief executive officer at MiStay, said the firm was building an entire ecosystem to enable a flexible model of staying at hotels. “Travelers 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,” he said.
Separately, Pranav Prabhakar, co-founder and chief technology at MiStay, said the company’s product was helping hotels realise their full revenue potential through the optimal use of their inventory during unutilised hours. “Hotels can in fact run at more than 100% occupancy,” he said.
Ah! Ventures founding partner Abhijeet Kumar said the firm was confident in its investment in MiStay because of its ability to scale the use of hotel inventory and the market potential for the segment it was operating in.
MiStay was founded in 2016 by Sandeep Jaiswal and Pranav Prabhakar, who both are an alumni of IIT-Madras. The company initially focussed on serving the business-to-business corporate market, but later shifted gears to the consumer market in the middle of last year.
In 2017, it raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Axilor Ventures and a group of angel investors. It claims to have grown five times since its pivot to the consumer market, and says it has achieved operational profitability. It is currently present in 100 cities through 1,500 hotels.
