Behind StayVista's ₹220 Cr villa stays ✨
The Indian group booking insight all over again.
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Back to StayVista Story ✨
The company makes more than ₹200 Crores in revenue and has ~800 properties with 3000 rooms. A rare company that is building an AirBnb of the premium stays and owns 30% of the organised villa market. Let’s dive —
So, what’s cooking in this space?
India is spending more on travel and will become the 4th largest global spender in travel by 2030. With the increase in per capita income and a younger demographic (28 yrs median age), India’s hospitality space will grow by 10% for the next 3 years. The hospitality space can be divided into hotels & homes (villas, cottages, etc.)
Hotels: Brands like Hyatt, OberaI, Taj came first and platforms came second.
Homes: Platforms like Airbnb came first as sector remained largely organised.
What did The StayVista crack then?
Solve a niche problem.
Group travelers make up half of India's travel market, which differs from Western preferences where solo travel is more common. Indians love spending time together — they need common areas to chill over bigger bedrooms. Plus, Millennials & Gen Zs need accommodations that offer meaningful connections.
StayVista wanted to solve for these users — who like traveling in groups and provided them with a premium experience — the secret to a 30% market share in organized villa space. Positioned themselves like a better AirBnb alternative which is only for a premium offering.
The loop is simple: pick an ICP → understand their core need → serve it to fullest with a touch of apsiration → create a premium positoning.
Solve for trust.
StayVista is offering a premium service — higher AOVs at ₹45,000 for a 2-night stay, a huge commitment in a price-sensitive market. Their hack to solve this? creating trust by talking to customers promptly.
Their instant website conversions have increased from 5% in the start to the current 40%. The insight? users want to build confidence by talking to a person before making a heavy commitment.Also, 60% of the company’s guests are referred or repeated. Once the conversion is done and service is offered, customers become brand influencers — share stories with friends & families — get more users on the platform — creating a snowball effect.
Cracking the discovery.
You can have the best product or service but it won’t matter if the user does not discover it. StayVista has cracked the user acquisition well — on the direct side, they have gone bullish on creating content— have 550k followers on Instagram.
This is coupled with strategic partnerships with both online partners like Airbnb Booking.com, and offline partners like old-school travel agencies and premium hotels ensures broad brand discovery and cracks presence across both modern and traditional travel networks. The framework is simple: don’t leave any distribution channel untouched and go for partnerships often.
That’s all for now. We have a complete podcast with the founder of StayVista, where we cover this business in-depth in a 17-minute episode.
If you reached the end, I have a request.
Do you know a EV founder, Venture fund, expert operator? If yes, we would love to speak to them - we are building out an in-depth report on India’s EV value chain & we would love to get solid builders contribute to this report. Just reply to this email & we would love to share you what we are building & get your perspective.
This week at GrowthX.
We are building a women founder focused series on the GrowthX YouTube channel. We are curating a set of little known Women Founders that no one is covering & need the limelight they deserve - details 👇
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