US-based accelerator Y Combinator has announced an investment of ₹82 lakhs ($120,000) in the Gurugram-based home rental startup ZiffyHomes. ZiffyHomes is part of Y Combinator’s summer cohort for 2018.
ZiffyHomes, a technology-driven home rental marketplace, was founded by Salil Agarwal, Saurabh Kumar, Sanchal Ranjan, along with Saurabh Kumar in 2015. It provides an online rental homes discovery platform to let its users rent a home online without the hassle of brokers.
It also provides the facility to pay rents online and the convenience to move across its houses with ease. It provides a comprehensive solution using data analytics to help its users book a house to of their choice. ZiffyHomes has acquired two rental service providers Fella Homes and Nivassa Rental to strengthen its platform.
“This (incubation programme) is a perfect opportunity for us that is helping us enhance our business model and providing an effective vision to think from the perspective of adding value to customer experience,” said Sanchal Ranjan, Co-founder at ZiffyHomes.
The startup had earlier raised ₹2 crores ($314,600) in a seed funding round from angel investors Bikky Khosla and Anirudh Agarwal.
Other startups in the home rental domain include Bengaluru-based NestAway, it had raised $51 million in series D funding led by UC-RNT Fund, along with Goldman Sachs, IDG Ventures India, and Tiger Global Management in March this year. Bengaluru-based NoBroker is another player in the same domain competing with ZiffyHomes.
Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley-based seed accelerator, was founded by Andrew Levy, Jessica Livingston, Paul Graham, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell in 2005. It provides seed funding to startups with a potential of scaling the global markets. Along with funding the accelerator also helps the entrepreneurs with their ideas, along with helping them deal with investors and acquirers.
It has been focused on the Indian market and has made some very promising investments. This latest investment in ZiffyHomes makes it their 26th investment in an Indian startup. Some of Y Combinator’s prominent investments in Indian startups include Groww, Innov8, Razorpay, Drivezy, among many others.