Nestaway’s FY18 revenue grows at slower rate, loss widens

Bengaluru-based online home rental startup NestAway Technologies Pvt. Ltd saw its operating revenue rise even as net losses widened due to high expenditures for the financial year through 31 March 2018.

The company’s operating revenue grew 70% to Rs 41.86 crore, up from Rs 24.72 crore during the previous year, its latest financial statements sourced by VCCEdge, the data and research platform of News Corp VCCircle, show.

The firm’s revenue growth rate in FY18, however, slowed as compared to the previous financial year. In FY17, Nestaway’s revenue grew nearly eight-fold to Rs 24.72 crore, up from Rs 3.14 crore the previous year.

Net losses widened to Rs 156.81 crore in 2017-18, from Rs 97.72 crore the previous year. Gross expenditure also rose to Rs 193.96 crore in the current financial year, from Rs 127.60 crore in the year-ago period.

An email sent to Nestaway’s co-founder and chief executive, Amarendra Sahu, seeking comments on the company’s financial performance did not elicit a response at the time of publishing this report.

Nestaway, which offers private rooms, fully furnished apartments and shared accommodations on rent, is one of the most well-funded players in this space. The company has raised an estimated $94-95 million from UC-RNT, Tiger Global Management, Chiratae Ventures, Goldman Sachs, InnoVen Capital, Flipkart and DST Global among others.

In its last known funding round in March last year, it raised $51 million (Rs 332.5 crore then) in a Series D round of funding led by Goldman Sachs and UC-RNT Fund.

Nestaway was founded by Sahu, Deepak Dhar, Smruti Parida and Jitendra Jagadev in January 2015. It turns ‘for-rent’ apartments into managed, fully-furnished houses and provides them to pre-verified tenants.

The firm, which initially targeted single working professionals, has expanded its services to families. Currently, the company offers both shared and private rooms for individuals as well as properties suited for families.

The four-year-old company has served more than 55,000 tenants and has more than 25,000 homes on its network, as per the latest company information. Nestaway is present in 12 cities including Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Noida, Pune, Delhi, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Faridabad, Navi Mumbai, Thane and Mumbai.

In July last year, it strengthened its top deck and appointed former Amazon executive Sandeep Daga as its chief financial officer and former RBS technical lead Ravindra Singh Rawat as vice president of technology.

Competition in the shared accommodation and living space has become intense over the past few months. In October last year, Softbank-backed OYO entered the shared residential segment through its offering OYO Living.

Earlier in the day, the company also launched Nestaway Startup Lab, an incubation programme that helps consumer startups build their business by granting access to its customer base.