Hospitality
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mistay offers flexible hotel reservation based on real time need IRENE SUSAN EAPEN
Sandeep Jaiswal, Co-Founder, MiStay, says the startup aims to change the rules of hotel bookings by introducing flexibility and fairness.
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iStay was started with the aim to break the age-old traditions and change the rules of hotel industry to travel flexible and fair to travellers. Stating that they could relate the hotel industry with that of the cab industry, Sandeep Jaiswal, the Co-Founder of MiStay, said, “There was a time when one had to
hire a cab for the entire day if they needed to use it even for a few hours. After the dent made by services like Ola and Uber in the cab industry, it is hard to imagine booking a cab for an entire day when need it only to go to work. Unfortunately, this has not changed when it comes to hotel booking. We are used to booking a room for an entire day even when we need it for just a few hours.” Travellers, who have a long layover can use this concept to relax for few hours before a connecting flight and Business Travellers often require rooms to freshen up for few hours before a meeting, health tourists who are visiting a hospital in a different city and students who are
travelling to write an exam for an interview and religious travellers as they all require room for only few hours and can benefit from this concept. Backpackers want to use the hotel room only to sleep and can book just the night slot. Majority of our customers that we have been receiving so far are people in transit who are using the hotels near airports/ railway station to take a short break before their connecting flight. In the short span of time, 36% of MiStay’s customers have already become a repeat custome. We have already started seeing sudden growth in the last few weeks. We have seen over 200% month-on-
month growth and this is likely to increase multi-folds as we start tapping various growth channels. MiStay is currently operational in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Gurgaon. With a focus on content marketing, social media will be an important channel for MiStay. “We are starting #MiStayMyHours campaign with engaging content and contests. Recently, we had a group of bikers from Hyderabad who promoted MiStay in their trip to Leh Ladakh. We are looking to position it as a movement and build a strong community of travellers who will be the ambassadors of this movement.”
construkt hostel aims to create community conducive stay IRENE SUSAN EAPEN
Construkt Hostel was started as a convenient, community curated hostel accommodation for the travelling startup & creative community, says its Co-Founder & Head of Operations, Karan Bahadur.
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onstrukt as a concept was launched as a startup festival titled Construkt Festival in 2013 and had organized three festivals for entrepreneurs encouraging different verticals to be part of the event. Karan Bahadur, Co-Founder and Head of Operations of the startup, says, “Construkt Crawl is a part of the festival which is similar to a pub crawl where you get to identify one startup to another and listen to their stories
during the festival.” “As we noticed the trend of listening to podcast we decided to launch Go Construkt Radio last year an online radio station that shares stories of entrepreneurs on their growth and challenges. We have completed one season of 33 episodes; some of our prominent speakers are Santosh Panda- Founder of Explara, HarsghaFounder of Swiggy, Ajith KarimpanaFounder Furlenco, Sharad SharmaHead of Ispirt.” People are looking for networking with like-minded people with the right kind of ambience as the mindset of people has changed over the years so people can come and mingle to create vibrant community in Construkt Hostel. We decided to launch a startup hostel for entrepreneurs titled Construkt
Hostel in May 2016 in Indiranagar in Bangalore with four bedrooms, living room, dining area, balconies, library laundry area and a fully equipped self-catering kitchen. “We have had mostly startup entrepreneurs staying with us from the tech space, culinary space and fitness space. The common area space in the hostel is used for offsite meetings by startups.” Marketing It has recently used social media for the launch campaign for a month. Since the launch, Construkt has partnered with Innofest, Swissnex, Power of Youth and with various other organisations in hosting events to benefit the entrepreneurial community.In 2015 Construkt tied up with NUMA, a French accelerator that set up in Bangalore to help them
in their acceleration process. In a 2015 survey of 2,000 tech startups, Construkt found that there were close to 18,000 room requirements per year. We have noticed that with 18,000 room nights per year in the startup eco system. In-house events “Some of our in-house events are Open Hack, a pitching session with two activities in a month which is a platform for resident entrepreneurs to talk about the startup on various topics. The latest event was on Gaming by Mohsin, CEO of Memcorp Learnings followed by a gaming session. We are planning to invite mentors to come over and discuss on various topics. We have been partnering with startups in India.”