Branded co-living at 25% premium

Isthara Parks Pvt Ltd is a premium residential venture offering high quality co-living and executive/ student living with lavish facilities and amenities across nine major cities in India. Its premium features include a well planned layout, stylish interior design, beautiful landscaping and architecture along with various other facilities.

The company has properties in strategic locations in each city around important clusters. Each property offers the guests comfortable living spaces, dedicated housekeeping and security services, and more than any average paying guest accommodation or hostel. In an interaction with The Hans India, Isthara's Co-founder Krishna Kumar reveals further expansion plans and growth strategy.

When was Isthara founded? Where do you have operations so far?

Isthara was founded in 2017, and it is going to be six years old now. At present, we are providing co-living solutions across nine major cities such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, and Chennai. So far, our food court solutions are provided across nine cities including Bengaluru, Chennai, Gurgaon, Hyderabad and Noida.

How many verticals the company has and where do you see more growth?

Isthara has two business verticals – Co-Living and smart food courts. It is the largest co-living player in Hyderabad, and has got close to about 7,000 beds in co-living across India. Co-Living is operated across cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Gurgaon, so these are basically much curated.

The company also has the same product in student living, and close to 16,000 beds in that space. In total, it manages over 24,000 beds in both these verticals, and it is heading towards the 30,000-mark. Through our co-living spaces, provides fully-furnished shared-living accommodation for working professionals and students, with a host of amenities paired with premium features.

The latest or the youngest vertical is the smart food court segment which was launched about three years ago. Through these smart food courts, Isthara assumes the role of the technology partner and vendor aggregator to help educational institutes and corporates to digitise their food courts and cafeterias for more efficient management.

Since its launch, Isthara smart food courts have witnessed an average per-ticket consumption growth of over 100 per cent in each city, as compared to its pre-modified traditional cafeteria format. In the food court segment, Isthara aims to scale by 10X to 500 food courts in the next three years and achieve pan India market leadership across the food court segment

What are the reasons for good growth post pandemic?

Isthara has grown extremely well post Covid. There are multiple reasons behind it and one of the fundament reason is the strong markets that are favourable for operators. There aren't the same numbers of operators' as pre-Covid. The second bigger aspect is the also that the consumer behaviour has changed dramatically.

Consumers are more brand conscious, experience conscious, and they are more into hallmarks such as hygiene, and sanitations. They have become more conscious today than what they were three years ago like from where his food comes from, etc. Post-Covid, customers gone through baptism. They started demanding much more and they are fine paying a premium price for the experience.

Covid has been the catalyst to move customer from non-branded to branded experiences. Now, a lot of customers understand brand terminologies better than it what it was pre-Covid. So, there are two reasons for it – one is market opening up and two- customers migrating to a more branded experience. So, it is a combination of these two that is fuelling our growth.

What are the further expansion plans of the company?

Isthara is more into going deep into the existing verticals rather than starting anything new. It will go deeper into the existing nine cities that we are working in. We would like to go much deeper into places like Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Tirupati. These are very large opportunities that allow us to grow exponentially within the city.

The idea of growth here is slightly different. The promoters thought process in this particular point is to grow deeper into the city as opposed to having flags put around the country. As a company, we would like to achieve growth by going deeper into segments.

Are you looking to raise funds in the near future?

We have recently raised $10 million in a fresh funding round. As a company that is basically keen to grow, we are not looking at any consolidation at this moment. Funding at the right time is very critical. Once the usage of these funds is exhausted, we will be talking to the market again by the end of this year or beginning next year when we achieve certain level of growth.

How affordable is your platform when compared to your competitors or traditional renting?

In terms of price points, Isthara is probably 25-30 per cent higher compared to the unbranded players in the market. Today, the customer understands the value this extra 25-30 per cent brings. At a mass market, our services today are quite premiumised compared to a regular paying guest accommodation.

The 30 per cent that the customer is paying is for the branded experience, 30 per cent is what he is paying for the amenities, that 30 per cent is what he is paying for the technology that we have to offer, and that 30 per cent is also for various other benefits that Isthara as a community gives to him.