Student housing startup Stanza, recently announced that it will venture into managed housing for working professionals with a capacity of 10,000 beds in four cities. The company plans to add an additional 50,000 beds in the new segment with an investment of ₹150Cr for expansion.
According to a LiveMint report, the company initially will focus on cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, and Coimbatore and will, later on, expand to three more cities.
With the expansion, the three-year-old company plans to take on bigger players in the co-living space such as OYO Life, Zolo Stays, and Nestaway.
According to Stanza Living, the existing shared-living sector in India is fragmented and unorganized and suffers from “service quality gaps like ill-maintained and cramped buildings, poor quality food, lack of access to daily facilities”.
“From our conversations, it was clear that more professionals are choosing to use co-living products over self-owned apartments since access to rented apartments is increasingly becoming difficult for them. Gated communities and welfare associations are increasingly turning their back on working professionals,” said Anindya Dutta, Managing Director of Stanza Living.
Founded in July 2017 by Anindya Dutta, Sandeep Dalmia, the Delhi-based startup started operations with 100 beds focused on student accommodation in Delhi University’s North campus area and has since aggressively expanded more than 10 cities. To date, the startup claims to have added a total of 55,000 beds, including the working professionals segment.
So far, the startup has raised total funding of $70mn from investors like Falcon Edge Capital, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Matrix Partners, and Alteria Capital. It was last valued at $300 million in its Series C round in July 2019.
Stanza Living will offer features like live cafes and kitchens, chef-curated meals, WiFi, laundry service, housekeeping and round the clock security with the working professionals product.
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