Goldman Sachs invests $5 mn in rental startup NestAway

Bengaluru-based online property rental platform NestAway has raised around $5 million from existing investor Goldman Sachs. 

NestAway Technologies, which runs the platform, allotted 13,882 Series D1 compulsorily convertible preference shares with a face value of Rs 10 each at a premium of Rs 25,151 to Goldman Sachs, according to regulatory filings. 

When contacted, NestAway co-founder Amarendra Sahu offered no comments on the latest investment, citing that it was merely a "routine process".

Goldman Sachs had made its first investment in the home rental startup in March 2018.  Along with UC-RNT fund, it led NestAway’s Series D funding round which saw the startup raise $51 million. 

UC-RNT is an investment fund floated by Tata Sons’ chairman-emeritus Ratan Tata, University of California and Swiss investment firm Schroder Adveq. 

NestAway, a managed home rental network of over 20,000 homes, claims to be serving over 39,600 tenants across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Noida, Greater Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, Faridabad. 

Earlier this year, in May, NestAway raised $10 million in a funding round co-led by existing investors Tiger Global Management and Chiratae Ventures (formerly IDG Ventures India). The companies invested $5 million each in the funding round. The two companies had also participated in the Series D round jointly led by Goldman Sachs and the UC-RNT Fund.

In February 2019, it was reported that NestAway was in talks to raise $100 million from a clutch of investors including Chinese conglomerate Fosun International and Chinese venture capital firm Shunwei Capital. 

That same month, NestAway reported that its operating revenues rose while its net losses widened due to high expenditures for the financial year ending March 31, 2018.

In July, one of the co-founders of NestAway Technologies Deepak Dhar moved on from the startup to set up his own venture in the fin-tech sector.

The startup was founded in January 2015 by Sahu, Dhar, Jitendra Jagadev, a former engineer at Philips Consumer Electronics and Smruti Parida, a former engineer at Microsoft.

NestAway is one of the most well-funded players in the sector, having secured funding from the likes of venture debt and lending platform InnoVen Capital, ecommerce giant Flipkart and Yuri Milner backed investment firm DST Global.