Goldman Sachs-backed Nestaway enters the co-living market with Hello World

Home rentals firm Nestaway Technologies has entered the co-living market with the launch of a subsidiary called Hello World.

Apart from co-living, the subsidiary will also cater to the student housing market. Hello World will be headed by Nestaway co-founder Jitendra Jagadev. The co-living offering will provide housekeeping and other amenities in shared room and single bedroom kitchen set ups.

Incorporated in March this year, Hello World already has a presence in 15 cities including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, Pune, Kota and Dehradun. Overall, it has a capacity of 10, 000 beds at present.

“We want this to be an experience for students and young adults. After the initial 20%, we did not have to wait for long for the occupancy rate to go up to 90%,” Jagadev said. He further added that under this model, the buildings would be taken on long lease of upto 10 years by Nestaway from developers.

Hello World will also conduct community events and has a common community space for its residents. Jagadev further added that the company planned to enter nine new cities and expand its capacity to 50,000 beds by next year.

“Hello World membership will provide young urban migrants with a comfortable and a hassle-free way of living with access to community activities, weekly gatherings, housekeeping, 24/7 concierge service, round-the-clock smart security, assistance with maintenance for just one-month rent as security deposit and no brokerage fees,” a statement issued by the company said.

The company will also look at creating co-working spaces along with the co-living properties, expanding beyond its core area of providing furnished shared accommodations by working with homeowners to eliminate brokers.

With the co-living brand, Nestaway is entering a space where Softbank backed OYO has started building capacity through a partnership with IIT Delhi for student housing. OYO is also in negotiations with Lovely Professional University to buy its student accommodation assets.

Nestaway which recently received an infusion of $5 million from existing investor Goldman Sachs has been looking to enter the asset management space and has also started operating offline touch points in Bengaluru. The company also saw its cofounder Deepak Dhar exit earlier this year to set up a fintech company.