Wednesday, April 24

US-Based Y Combinator Backs Indian Rental Startup ZiffyHomes

Home rental service startup ZiffyHomes which is based in Gurugram has secured an amount of $120,000 from a US-based startup incubator Y Combinator. This investment by Y Combinator has been made for its summer cohort 2018. It had earlier made an investment in one more Indian startup for the same.

It was last month that the US incubator invested $120,000 in a blockchain-focussed startup known as Kyte.ai. The company is gearing up for its Demo day scheduled in August in the valley in which these companies will be publicly displayed.

“Demo Day at YC is the most effective way of raising funds to fuel the future growth of a company and we look forward to the same for ZiffyHomes,” said Sanchal Ranjan, co-founder of ZiffyHomes.  

Founded in 2015 by Saurabh Sinha, Sanchal Ranjan, and Salil Agarwal, ZiffyHome is an online discovery platform that depends on technology to offer rental accommodation. The company provides a variety of services beyond contract closure. It utilizes an analytics-based algorithm for the creation of area heat maps which provides demand forecast and rentals of prevailing areas.

The acquisitions of ZiffyHomes have been in the similar areas that include FellaHomes and Nivassa Rental.

“This is a perfect opportunity for us that is helping us enhance our business model and providing an effective vision to think from the perspective of adding value to customer experience,” Ranjan added.

Talking about the earlier funding, ZiffyHomes had raised a seed funding of $314.6K from Angel investors based in India namely Bikky Khosla and Anirudh Agarwal prior to this investment. The startup claims to have more than 2,000 recurring customers.

The company’s method of making revenue is simple, they charge a certain proportion of rentals to house owners in exchange of managing their property for rental purpose which also comprises of furnishing and fixed rental revenues.

In this sector, ZiffyHomes competes with several companies such as StayAbode, ZiffyHomes, CoLife and CoHo, among others.