An online hotel booking company that offers booking hotels by the pack of hours, MiStay has raised an undisclosed amount of investment through investment firm ah! Ventures and a group of investors led by Hyderabad based ex-entrepreneur, Sumit Nagpal. MiStay will utilize the fund to grow the leadership team and also to build up the brand. Founded in 2016 by alumni of IIT Madras, Sandeep Jaiswal & Pranav Prabhakar, MiStay had previously raised the first round of seed investment in late 2017.

Later, the company pivoted from the initial focus on the B2B corporate market to the consumer market in mid-2018. Since then,
MiStay has grown 5 times and hit operational profitability in June this year. “Travelers today no longer want to plan their trip based on the hotels’ check-in time. The hotel industry is poised to transform to meet these evolving travelers’ needs. This transition, however, requires disrupting the age-old technological ecosystem in hotel industry and raising operational capabilities of hotels. We are building the entire ecosystem ground up to enable the flexible hotel stay and be the leader in this market”, said Sandeep Jaiswal, the Co-Founder & CEO at MiStay. The average hotel occupancy rate in India stands at around 65%, thus the unsold hotel rooms constitute around 6 Billion Dollars of missed revenue opportunity for hotels. MiStay creates a new demand of customers who require hotels with early check-in, short-stay or day-use rooms which hotels can tap into to maximize their occupancy and revenue.

“The micro-stay model brings a unique revenue optimization opportunity for the hotels. Our product helps hotels realize their full revenue potential by unlocking the value in hotel inventory during the hours it remains unutilized. Hotels can in fact run at more than 100% occupancy”, said Pranav Prabhakar, the Co-Founder & CTO at MiStay.

MiStay is currently operational in 100 cities with around 1500 hotel partners. Unlike other counterparts who focus on couple-friendly hotels, MiStay sees business travelers or travelers having long layover as the primary target audience. The partner hotels of MiStay include many premium hotel brands such as The Park, Radisson, Holiday Inn as well as mid-scale hotel chains such as Lemon Tree, Mango Hotels, Mint Hotels, 1589 Hotels, Treebo, and others.

“Currently we have divided a full-day into 3 smaller slots of a few hours which costs as low as around 30% of the full-day tariff. We are working closely with the hotels and aim to bring even more flexibility to travelers. Obsession with customer experience has been and will remain the guiding principle for our every move”, added Nupur Singh, who leads customer success at MiStay.
Abhijeet Kumar, Founding Partner at ah! Ventures said “Hotel booking is a very large market and the unique approach of MiStay for inventory optimization will change the way hotel industry operates.

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MiStay, an online hotel booking company based out of Bangalore, raises funding from Axilor Ventures and a group of angel investors. MiStay allows booking hotel rooms by pack of hours with flexible check-in/ check-out times. The funds will be utilized in growing the team, marketing and scaling up operations across India. MiStay was part of Axilor’s Winter ’16 accelerator batch.

Founded in 2016 by IIT Madras alumni, Sandeep Jaiswal and Pranav Prabhakar, MiStay is currently operational in 30 cities with around 400 hotels, with the largest network of hotels in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. The partner hotels of MiStay include various branded hotel chains such as The Park Hotels, Pride Hotels, Sarovar Hotels, Keys Hotels, Treebo Hotels and Mango Hotels.MiStay’s customer base has grown 7 times in last 6 months.

“We have seen an overwhelming traction from hotel partners as well as customers in a year. While the hotels are seeing significant impact in their revenue by optimizing their room inventory though MiStay, the end users find the MiStay product useful because of the flexibility they get to book hotels only for the hours they require. The focus now is on rapid expansion and growth, while keeping the customer experience intact”, said Sandeep, the co-founder & CEO at MiStay.

MiStay team post the funding

“We are excited to have Axilor Ventures and other investors including some hospitality industry veterans join us, and we are looking forward to leverage their collective experience”, he added.

While the hotel booking market is crowded with various players, the unique model which differentiates MiStay from other players is its’ slot-wise hotel booking system. A full day is divided into 3 smaller slots: morning (8:00 am – 11:00 am), day (12:00 noon – 7:00 pm) and night (8:00 pm – 7:00 am), and one can book any combination of consecutive slots based on their need, including multiple day bookings. Additionally, MiStay partners with only a curated set of hotels identified based on several factors such as hotel location, online rating and customer reviews, hotel amenities, staff behaviour and others. Majority of partner hotels of MiStay are located in transit areas, such as hotels near airports, railway stations, bus stations or at the business hubs of the city.

Asutosh Upadhyay, Head of Programs at Axilor said, “MiStay has taken a very innovative and customer-centric approach to hotel bookings, which is reflected in the fast paced growth they have seen since the launch. While giving travelers the best options, they are unlocking value in hotel inventory, making this a win-win solution for individuals and corporates. Axilor is happy to be backing this enthusiastic team with the vision to change the way the hotel industry operates today.”

In a move towards increased focus on mobile, MiStay had launched its’ android version of the hotel booking app earlier this year. MiStay had also introduced ‘MiStay for Business’ – a product designed for corporates to manage employees’ hotel accommodation needs by pack of hours. With this product, corporates can reduce their expenses on hotel booking by upto 40%, claims the company.

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MiStay, the hotel booking platform that offers more flexibility to travellers, has announced the launch of its mobile app. It does so by getting rid of rigid check-in and check-out times that have become standard throughout the hotel industry and instead, offers booking options for slots instead of days.

The recently announced booking app also offers the same flexible booking feature and is available on Google Play store. According to them, the primary reason for offering a mobile app is because of a constant rise in fraction of mobile users. MiStay was launched in April 2016 though the booking was previously restricted to web only.

“We have been experiencing a constant increase in mobile traffic in the last two months. Mobile constitutes around 60% of our website traffic and 80% of them are android devices. The launch of the android app is an initial move to our increased focus on mobile”, said Pranav Prabhakar, the co-founder and CTO of MiStay.

In a previous conversation with the team at MiStay, they shared that a large chunk of users they get come for hotel properties situated near transit places like airports and railway stations. Along with this, business travellers have also been using it for short durations. MiStay is currently operational in 8 metro cities in India – Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune, Gurgaon and Hyderabad. In these cities, MiStay has partnered with around 120 hotels including 5 star hotels as well as branded hotel chains such as Pride Hotels, Sarovar Hotel, Keys Hotel & Mango Hotel.

“We aim at delivering a seamless booking experience to our users. There is no sign-up or registration process required. Users can book a hotel in 3 simple steps”, said Pranav.

You can download the app on Google Play Store. For more details about MiStay, read our startup feature from October last year.

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How many times have you waited in the hotel lobby after arriving early because you can’t check into your room before 1200 hours? Or just spent hours at airport after your meeting to catch that late night flight? Or booked two room nights because you will arrive one evening and leave the next evening. There is a good possibility that all these scenarios sound familiar and that is because the entire hotel industry follows a rigid check-in and check-out pattern. We have adopted the system and generally plan our travel accounting for it.

(L to R) Pranav Prabhakar and Sandeep Jaiswal, Founders, MiStay

However, a young startup seems to have a different idea. Sandeep and Pranav, the founders of MiStay, believe that travellers should have more flexibility when choosing their accommodation. Both IIT Madras alumni, Sandeep carries experience in management consulting and has previously filed two patents for developing internal analytical tools. He has also co-founded AmrutDhara, a for-profit social enterprise. Pranav, carries experience in design & product development and apart from working with LinkedIn, he has founded startups to help photographers and videographers.

MiStay offers travellers the option to book hotel rooms by pack of hours with flexible check-in and check-out times breaking the conventional practice in the industry. Sandeep shares that with MiStay, their objective is not just to make hotels available for few hours but also to make it flexible for people looking for a day or day and a half or any other duration. They have divided the day into three slots as morning, day and night and travellers can book depending on their requirement.

This of course if great for travellers. Who wouldn’t want to save money if they don’t need the room for the full booking duration? Most of the traction MiStay has seen until now has been at the partner properties situated near transit places like airports or railway stations. However, Sandeep believes that it will see more usage from business travellers which is why he is in the process of putting together meaningful business ties to serve as accommodation partner for various companies.

The response from hotels has been mixed. One side of the argument is that they can reach new customers who would not book a hotel room at all otherwise and could get more bookings during low occupancy times. The other side is potential risk of eating through the full day bookings and potential loss of revenue.

Sandeep however shares that the partner hotels have full control on what inventory they make available through MiStay. They can choose how many rooms and what slots are available. Hoteliers see different occupancy rates all year round and can even choose to offer no inventory when they get full occupancy. The same inventory can be used multiple times by the hotel. The costs will add up for them with more guests however MiStay claims that the added costs will be justified with the higher price for the slots.

That however isn’t the only challenge for them. The tools used by hotels to manage their properties don’t have room for this flexibility. It is not yet integrated with any channel manager yet but some partnerships are in pipeline to allow for this flexibility. At this point, the hotels are managing their extranet separately to take care of the bookings.

The climb these guys have taken up is certainly a steep one. It won’t be easy to change the practice that has been followed for ages but they have certainly made good progress since the time they launched few months back. MiStay is now also a part of the accelerator Axilor Ventures founded by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalkrishnan & Shibulal which would help it grow further. You can visit MiStay.in to find more details.

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