Co-living and student housing firm Zolo is planning to increase its bed count to 70,000 from 45,000 over the next six months and will invest around Rs 78 crore for the expansion, co-founder and CEO Nikhil Sikri has said.
Sikri said the firm would expand its student housing business to cities like Kanpur and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Palakkad in Kerala. Zolo operated in 13 cities, including Delhi, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune, he said.
“We currently have around 45000 operational beds— 20,000 in student housing and 25,000 in co-living. It will take around four months to reach an operational strength of 70,000," Sikri said.
While the company is looking to take its co-living offering deeper in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, it's expanding to new cities in student housing.
“We are also coming up with 2,000 co-living beds in Noida. When it comes to the student housing segment, we will be expanding to cities like Navi Mumbai, Noida, Vizag, Lucknow, Kanpur, Indore and Palakkad,” Sikri said.
Of these, 3,000 beds each would come up in Kanpur, Lucknow, Palakkad and Visakhapatnam, while 2,000 in Navi Mumbai, 3,500 in Noida and 1,000 in Indore, he said.
The CEO said that the minimum price started from Rs 5,000 to Rs 15,000 a month per bed.
When asked how Zolo was preparing for growing competition in the co-living space, Sikri said, "What differentiates us from other players is that we offer roommate personalisation.”
“When someone joins Zolo, we collect some demographic information and psychological preferences and try to find the right roommate for the person.”
Zolo members can also move to any other company centres across cities seamlessly, he said
When asked about whether the company has incorporated changes in their lease agreement to mitigate the future Covid threats, Sikri said the company was transparent in its dealings with owners.
“We frame our agreement based on a very healthy and transparent dialogue with them. We don't believe in breaking relationships. It was one of the big factors that we came out of Covid without significant damages,” he said.
Customers were also provided Covid insurance and three months of free stay to those who lost their jobs during the pandemic. “In fact, the length of stay of customers increased during Covid not reduced," he said.
