Short stay, budget hotel aggregator, ZO Rooms, has raised $32 million in a Series B round from its existing investor — Tiger Global Management and new investors including Orios Venture Partners, Zishaan Hayath (investor in Ola and Housing), Mato Peric (ex-Global MD at Rocket Internet), and Kal Vepuri (a prolific US-based investor). 

ZO Rooms started with its first property in January 2015 and already has over 600 hotels across 35 cities as part of its standardised short-stay room offering, covering the entire breadth of stay duration ranging from a day's stay to six months’ stay across multiple star category hotels, guest houses, and service apartments. The company aims to expand its network to 1,500 hotels across 100 cities by December 2015 and 5,000 hotels across 200 cities by December 2016. 

Dharamveer Chouhan, co-founder and CEO, ZO Rooms said, “With the new round of funding, we will be maintaining a crucial balance between aggressive growth and flawless customer experience with a clear focus on profitability at every city level.  We will soon be penetrating other categories of hotels, guest houses and related accommodation options, offering our users with a gamut of options.”

The company meets the requirements of both leisure as well as business travellers through its brands Zostel (backpacker hostel) and ZO Rooms respectively. Zostel has already made its foray into international markets with its recent launch in Vietnam and would soon be present in more than 50 cities in India and other South-East Asian countries.

Chouhan said, "Going at the rate at which we are growing we would be clocking close to 30,000 room nights a day through our mobile app in mid-September 2016 and that would give us a run-rate of a million room nights annually. We promise to achieve these numbers without compromising a single bit on our solid customer experience.”

 ZO Rooms is currently maintaining over 80 per cent utilisation across all properties, of which 50 per cent bookings come directly from the app.  According to Chouhan, "People get out of the airport, fire up our app and book a ZO Room at a locality of their choice and a cab arrives for the transfer — all this at a single click. Through the latest version of our app, the guest can interact with a fully automated service desk that can take requests such as meal preferences, check-in timings, movie requests, laundry, or even order a birthday cake."

Plans are on to hire aggressively to ramp up its technology, data sciences and business development teams. ZO cash will be offered to first-time app users and referrals. Launched in August 2013, Zostel Hospitality Private Ltd (ZHPL) is a technology-led company that has launched two brands — Zostel and ZO Rooms.

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