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Online budget accommodation aggregator WudStay is set to close a $3-5 million funding in Series A round soon.
WudStay chief executive officer Prafulla Mathur told BusinessLine that the fresh funding will be utilised to expand its footprint across the country. “We plan to expand to 10,000 rooms across 65 cities in the next one year,” Mathur said. Currently, it is present in 37 cities with a network of over 350 properties and 3,500 rooms.
WudStay, which was launched in April this year, ties up with existing hotels across cities and picks up on an average 10 rooms per budget hotel, which is then upgraded to standards set by the company in terms of facilities, convenience and hygiene, and on a revenue share basis, are let out to customers. The revenue share margin for the company is between 20 per cent and 40 per cent for each room. WudStay has primarily targeted the unorganised affordable accommodations in tier I and II cities
Mathur said WudStay has a five-member team, which visits hotels with which it has tie-ups and carries out quality checks and also holds training sessions for the staffers. “We want to be the gold standard in hotel accommodation and that is the differentiation factor between us and the others,” he pointed out.
The company also has shikaris in Kashmir, house boats in Kerala and havelis in Rajasthan as part of its inventory. Nearly 95 per cent of the inventory are budget hotels, while the rest are five star properties.
In the pre-series A round, WudStay raised $3 million from Mangrove Capital, which was an early investor in Skype, and Vikas Saxena, the CEO of Nimbus, who in his individual capacity participated in the funding round.
“You can draw a parallel with telecom players in their early years when they went from one city to another to expand their network. We are doing the same though ours is a long gestation model,” explained Mathur, who earlier worked with Lehman Brothers and Bank of Scotland. “Start-ups have a bright future as they identify and fill the need gaps, and hence, what we are seeing right now is just the tip of the iceberg.”
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