Gaurav Vij, Co-Founder & CIO, HooLiv.com

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business

HooLiv is the brain child of What we say the Gang of four. I along with my other Co-Founders, Mr Chinmoy Mishra, Mrs Rasmi Mishra and Mr Abhishek Verma started HooLiv with a vision to transform the un-organized shared living spaces across the country.

With a very good exit from the earlier venture Allizhealth.com in the year 2018 creating immense value to its investors, the team decided to move on to another strategic venture. With AllizHealth, it was a pure Technology platform, the team this time wanted to come up with a venture which involves a descent blend of Technology and the Services, and there came HooLiv.

If we talk about the Co-Living space and why HooLiv, we need to understand the shared living landscape in India. With a survey done in 2019, The Co-Living sector in India demands nearly 46.3 million beds, and out of that nearly 8.9 million beds are required to suffice the need for Student Housing.

The current market is a mix of Organized players, which forms around 10-15% of the overall CO-LIVING space. These Organized professional companies serve primarily in the Tier 1 and Big Metro Cities, while leaving the Tier 2 cities to the local unorganized operators which forms the biggest share of co-living in India. These local operators intend to run hostels and co-living accommodations as typical business focussing mostly on the collections and regular living, rather than providing quality living to the residents. With the survey done by the HooLiv team during inception and validation stage, we found that most of these PGs were not even at par to the regular living standards, no or very less focus on hygiene, a social deficit model with no platform for people to connect, shabby spaces and unhygienic food were some of the key problems being faced by most of the residents across.

Now, This is where HooLiv focusses on and adds the value. HooLiv aims at organizing this student co-living sector across the TIER 2 and Non-Metro cities while also provided standardized, cozy and social living spaces to the Students, who relocate to these cities for their higher studies, and other professional studies preparation.

Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Staycay Abode Solutions Pvt Ltd

HooLiv is one of the leading CO-LIVING provider in the student co-living space. At HooLiv, we provide a 360 degree bundle of services to our residents, which includes the standard and essential services along with services to create a social, skills development and convenience for the residents. The services include but not limited to.

A. Well design, standard, Large Spacious Accommodation spaces to ensure the residents can relax and rejuvenate when they reach home after the tiring day.

B. Comfortable mattresses, Clean bedding, Daily Housekeeping, Laundry services, so that residents can focus on their primary work rather than focusing on the daily needs.

C. Delicious and Hygienic food with flexible meal plans.

D. High Speed and Secure Wifi at all HooLiv properties.

E. Yoga center, fitness centers, gaming zones, libraries, Television.

F. Technology driven and Smart living spaces, Smart Air Conditioners, Smart Pre-Paid meters which helps the residents to save on electricity bills.

G. Handy Mobile App for the residents to access anything and everything on day to day needs at the Hostel.

H. Industrial Trainings, Professional Trainings and Skills development so that students can learn while they stay at the HooLiv properties.

I. HooLiv community for the Residents to connect, challenge, collaborate and share.

J. And many more, you come stay and experience your Second Smart Home outside your Home.

Great Companies: What makes Staycay Abode Solutions Pvt Ltd different from hundreds of other Accommodation Providers?

As I shared that, India co-living sector is a blend of Organized Co-Living operators and Unorganized local hostel service providers. Most of the co-living accommodation providers provide a standard set of services and amenities which includes beds, almirah, private or common washrooms, wifi, meal. However, At HooLiv, we have designed our offerings based on three key pillars of co-living, which we call as 3Cs of Co-Living.

a. Comfort

With the experts in house, HooLiv has defined standards for the Hostels, Rooms, beds to ensure that the residents feel comfortable and cozy when staying back at the HooLiv properties. All HooLiv properties offer spacious rooms, comfortable beds, hygienic meals, high speed secure wifi, secured infrastructure, fun zones. Most of the big properties include gaming zones, fitness centers, libraries and cafe’s, enabling people to relax and rejuvenate during the stay.

b. Convenience

While you must have seen the co-living providers being rigid on the rentals. At HooLiv, we have designed our rental plans to be flexible as short as a week stay to as long as an year booking with us. Not only the rental plans, HooLiv believes in empowering the residents with a full-fledged mobile app which the tenants can use for all of their day to day necessities i.e. From bills, payments, support requests, weather, cab bookings, SOS, visitor requests, everything the tenant can access from mobile app at his/her convenience.

Tenants can raise request to match and switch rooms by Skills, area of interests and many other parameters in place.

c. Community

The founders being from technology past, believes that the next generation is going to be tech driven and collaborative. With HooLiv world, HooLiv connects tenants to collaborate on its platform. Whether its like someone wants to execute a college project, or introduce an offer, create a challenge, post or apply for a job, HooLiv world is a social platform aims at delivering a social value to its residents.

Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?

Our first venture was purely a technology play and HooLiv is a blend of technology and services gelling together to offer an optimum and cozy living to the residents. This needs the people on the ground and executing the operations to understand and use the technology to its best. I would say, that’s the biggest challenge, to not only create an ease for the operations team to use the technology, and to make them understand the power of the same. And with the AI and Machine learning coming into play in near future, this cultural gap in understanding the technology and its power will remain one of its kind of challenge which we need to address.

Another big challenge which every business not only in the co-living sector but the entire hospitality sector has faced during the COVID era is driving profitability and occupancy. At HooLiv, we took the COVID era as an opportunity to grow to nearly 4000 beds, while a lot of players were struggling to stand, and adapted various models to minimize the COVID impact to great extent.

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Staycay Abode Solutions Pvt Ltd?

If you see the Co-Living sector in India, there is a huge demand of over 46 million beds, and more than 20% (~8.9 million beds) in the student housing space. The pandemic has also helped creating a space for Co-living and accelerated the growth as people are now looking more for organized and standardized co-living operators, willing to pay more for a quality and hygienic living, rather than un-organized local providers.

Since past 4 years, the demand for Student Housing has been growing year on year. This market is expected to increase at a strong CAGR of 17%. The top 30 players in student housing/co-living space offered a cumulative stock of more than 250,000 beds as of August 2019; stock to witness a CAGR of 36% between 2019-2023. The Student Co-Living sector is going to attract foreign and Indian institutional investors generating an investments opportunity for over 800 million in next 5 years.

Government of India is also working on various reforms to boost education and professional studies in India. The government is targeting a gross enrollment ratio (GER) of 30% by 2020-21, which will result in a further increase in the number of students enrolled for higher education, creating a huge demand for the Student Housing in next 5 years.

With all this, HooLiv has set a vision to emerge as the top and leading Co-Living provider over next 5 years, tapping the market not only in India but also expanding beyond to the Indian Sub-continent with a market cover to almost all major educational hubs Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in India and a target bed count of over 50000 beds.

Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Starting out is one of the most difficult step anyone can make, and it makes more difficult for someone with a high paying job to quit and start something. People often relates Entrepreneurship with a riskier proposition, and finds it difficult to take a step towards the journey. What bothers to them the most is the uncertainty which comes with any new business. But once you are able to pass the big hurdle of starting out, believe me, you have achieved a bit milestone on your start-up journey.

Decide on what you want to achieve, why you are doing this venture for, what problem you want to solve and where you want to be in next 5 years. Listen to your heart and mind both, weigh your thought and decide the next step.

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