Sequoia Capital leads Rs 73 Cr funding in Stanza Living

In what reflects as a growing investor interest in the shared accommodation space for students, marquee venture capital firm Sequoia Capital India has led an investment of Rs 73 crore (over $10 million) in Stanza Living.

The investment round marks the largest ever so far in this space in India and has also seen participation by existing investors Matrix Partners and Accel. With this, the total capital raised by Stanza Living stands at Rs 86 crore so far.

The Delhi-based firm is looking to use the capital to strengthen its technology engine, beef up its core leadership team as also establish its network of operations across multiple markets.

“With 2000 beds across the Delhi-NCR region itself, we are positioning this business for scale. We are in advanced conversations to expand to educational hubs such as Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad and a few more cities by the end of this ongoing academic year (May-June),” Anindya Dutta, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living told ET.

The firm has been growing its scale at a rather strong pace having grown from 100 to 2,000 beds in just 4 months. Stanza aims to be the largest player in the student accommodation space in India which is pegged at about $10 billion.

For this, the firm is looking to double down on volumes aggressively with a growth target of well over 5x at between 10,000-20,000 beds in the next 8 months as the curtains close on the ongoing academic year.

Founded in May 2017, Stanza Living typically charges between Rs 7,000-25,000 per bed and clocked Rs 2 crore worth of revenues in the academic year ended May 2018.

The business entails strong margins of above 25% across properties for the firm and this allows a strong revenue growth potential. The firm is on track to end May 2019 with a 10x annual growth in topline crossing Rs 20 crore.

“Stanza’s team and their execution is impressive, and Sequoia India is delighted to partner with them in their vision to provide quality housing to students in India. Student housing is an established asset class in the west and we believe Stanza, with its scalable business model and strong economics, can create the asset class in India”, said Ashish Agrawal, Principal, Sequoia Capital India Advisors.

As a full-stack business which offers end-to-end services around the student accommodation space, Stanza Living provides a holistic network of food, grocery, medical, wifi and other allied services within and around the residency.

The firm has partnered with other startups in the space such as Lenskart, BookMyShow to offer free eye check-up, movie watching services amongst others for its student residents.