YourOwnROOM is a recognized Prop-tech Coliving start-up that is championing the cause of millennial living. It was founded in Feb 2016 by Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, a Stanford GSB alumnus and senior vice president of Xchanging (now DXC) and his colleague and friend
Sachin Joshi who built a commercial-grade technology platform for some of the largest global commercial real estate companies.
Migrant Millennials – The largest underserved demography
There were 4.7 M migrant millennials across the top 7 cities in India in 2018 and will be 7 M by 2023. They continue to face discrimination and compromise on location, travel, security, safety, and comfort. COVID without any doubt has impacted this scenario in unexpected ways. In the short term, it has created insecurity and instability in the minds of millennials which has led many of them to leave cities for their respective home towns. However, in a few months, most of them will return to cities en masse. This pandemic has also made millennials aware of the fact that a good home is a key to their professional and personal success. This realization has directly led to an increase in demand for better quality homes.
Techtonic shift in residential real estate
India has nearly 11 million urban vacant housing units and residential rental yield is very low at about 2%. For Individual homeowners, the biggest challenge is continuous cash flow and low rental yields. For developers, the biggest challenge is the unsold Inventory and poor demand signals for current and future projects.
“Together we are talking about close to 1.5 Million homes worth $150 B that is creating immense stress in the Residential Real Estate.” Says Prabhat Tiwary, CEO of YourOwnROOM.
There is a fundamental gap in demand and supply. On one hand, supply is in the form of typical 2-3 BHK family homes while most of the demand is being fuelled by singles and students. COVID has only precipitated the challenges of the Indian residential real estate market already grappling with subdued demand and liquidity crisis. Real estate will do well with the right pricing & right unit size and hence student housing, retirement homes, co-living will be new realty growth drivers. Shared Residential Rental Market is $6.4 B with a Co-living penetration of 2.3% and will be $14 B by 2023 with an 8.3% Co-living penetration – JLL, 2019.
“Economic return of residential real estate properties will be attractive when rental yield is engineered in addition to capital appreciation” adds Prabhat Tiwary.
YourOwnROOM’s story so far
YourOwnROOM is a Residential Prop-Tech rental and property management business that provides strategically located, good quality, managed co-living and family homes to millennials and families that are safe and comfortable. Their proposition to tenants is access to good properties, efficient “work from home” co-living experience, and reduced travel time to less than 15 Minutes.
Their proposition to individual homeowners is Prop-Tech enabled hassle-free professional rental and property management. For residential asset owners, the draw is uninterrupted rental cash flow from existing Inventories and unlocking of vacant properties and a higher rental yield of 3-5% for apartments/ houses.
Their proposition to developers and real estate funds is Prop-Tech enabled operating partner (OpCo) for large assets and a higher rental yield of 6-10% for large assets and BTRs.
YourOwnROOM currently manages 1.5K beds across Bangalore and Pune. Asset under management is 0.3 M Sqft valued at $30 M. Their annualized Rentals is $1 M, annualized Revenue is $ 0.5 M and they have a healthy order book of $6 M. YourOwnROOM raised $1.3 M till their seed round from US-based Lotus Capital and other high profile Angels across the US and Bangalore like Ravi Chaturvedi, Narasimha Murthy, and others.
YourOwnROOM considers Nestaway, Zolo, and Colive as their principal competitors. Unlike many of their competitors who reported much fewer occupancies during COVID, YourOwnROOM was able to hold their rentals and occupancies because of the choice of our asset, long term rental contracts with our tenants, and meticulous tech-based operations. YourOwnROOM is among those very few PropTech companies with a very strong focus on unit economics. They are operationally profitable in both Bangalore and Pune and will be EBITDA positive in the current financial year.
YourOwnROOM’s Growth hinges on Geographical, Product and Digital Expansion
YourOwnROOM’s focus over the next 3-5 years will be to drive profitable growth. They plan to Scale to 10 K beds in 3 years and 50K beds in 5 years.
The first lever of growth is geographical expansion. They plan to increase their penetration in chosen 25 micro-markets in Bangalore and Pune. They also plan to expand to Hyderabad and other cities in a phased manner. The second Lever of growth is product expansion. They plan to expand their presence in executive Coliving Housing. The third level of growth is to offer digital platform services. They have a fully mature technology platform that can be offered to owners and tenants. They now have an opportunity to offer either their regular full-stack offering or individual property and rental services like agreement creation, KYC, property management, etc. They also have a digital solution for societies to manage their CAM and service operations and owners/ tenants.
“YourOwnROOM’s biggest differentiator is it’s Prop-Tech Enabled Golden Execution Model that helps us Scale our business Profitably across multiple cities and across all formats of assets. All our learnings has been encapsulated into our Prop-Tech platform and now being offered directly to owners, developers, and REIT to manage their real estate investments. “ says Sachin Joshi
YourOwnROOM sees a big opportunity to partner with large Indian and global asset management funds and developers. They are positioning themselves as their trusted operating partner who can help them get higher yields out of their residential portfolios. The next 5 years will see exponential growth of coliving and shared living. Coliving is an attractive space, by 2023 it will be a 14 B market with 8.3% penetration with demand being fuelled by migrant millennials moving to cities.
“YourOwnROOM has built a very strong brand over the last 4 years to profitably scale pan India. We are now raising our Pre-Series-A to launch executive housing, expand our services in Hyderabad, boost marketing & sales, and enhance our digital services” concludes Prabhat Tiwary.
Connect here,
Website: https://yourownroom.com/
Press: https://yourownroom.com/page/14/Press
Awards : https://yourownroom.com/page/76/Awards
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