Nestaway eyes small-town India as tenants exit Metros

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As the ongoing pandemic triggers reverse migration, online home rental company Nestaway Technologies on Thursday launched a partnership/franchising model to make inroads into the smaller cities and towns in India.

According to reports, Covid-19 has caused massive disruption in the home rental industry in India as there has been massive reverse migration of youth to their hometowns.

"We need to be where tenants are. Pre-covid, tenant base was crowded in central business districts and few busy areas in Tier I cities. We see a tectonic shift in consumer behaviour now," said Amarendra Sahu, Co-founder and CEO, Nestaway.

"While our existing model works best in busy pockets of the city and offers a full-stack service to make living easier, post-Covid, customers want less rent and less services," he added.

Reports claim that the reverse migration is as high as 50 per cent in cities like Bengaluru with over 30 per cent of homes now lying vacant.

"That is why we are taking the decision to add a franchised version of our services so that local entrepreneurs can customize it as per the need of customers in their geographies," Sahu said in a statement.

As part of this new model, the independent property managers would have access to the same product, technology and know-how as the existing on-roll property managers.

Based on its internal migration and tenant exit data, Nestaway said over 10,000 people have vacated their rental homes in the last three months and have gone back to smaller cities or their hometowns.

Nestaway has seen a three times uptick in owner requests from smaller towns and cities.

The company said it aims to do at least 30 per cent of its business from non-metros in the next two years.

Launched in 2015, Nestaway currently has more than 50,000 tenants and 60,000 homes in its network.