Hourly hotel booking company MiStay lands funding from Ah! Ventures

Bangalore, India-based online hotel booking company MiStay is planning to take the next step forward as a startup thanks to a new round of undisclosed funding.

Investors in the round include Ah! Ventures, a firm that previously funded trip planning application iTraveller in 2015, and Hyderabad-based entrepreneur Sumit Nagpal.

A previously undisclosed seed round came in late 2017.

MiStay was originally created in 2016 to give corporate travelers the flexibility to book a hotel room for a few hours instead of a full day (which is also called a micro-stay).

Consumer market operations began in mid-2018, and the company currently partners with 1,500 hotels in more than 100 cities in India.

Pranav Prabhakar, co-founder and chief technology officer at MiStay, praised the company’s “unique revenue optimization opportunity” for hotels.

“Our product helps hotels realize their full revenue potential by unlocking the value in hotel inventory during the hours it remains unutilized. Hotels can in fact run at more than 100% occupancy.”

The company says that it will use the new funds to expand the leadership team and to build the brand.

Says Abhijeet Kumar, founding partner at Ah! Ventures: “Hotel booking is a very large market and the unique approach of MiStay for inventory optimization will change the way hotel industry operates.

“The market opportunity and the efficiency with which the founding team has scaled the business so far, made the investment decision a no brainer. We are very excited to be backing their vision.”