Zolo raises $5M in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners

Zolo, a co-living space provider has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by existing investor Nexus Venture Partners. The funding round also includes venture debt from Innoven Capital. The company plans to use these funds to grow aggressively to reach from 5,000 locked-in beds to over 12,000 beds and expand to Chennai and NCR in India by the end of this year. Founded by Nikhil Sikri and Akhil Sikri in September 2015, Zolo provides a place to stay, daily meals, housekeeping, firewall managed Wi-Fi, through an integrated app based technology platform at locations near large office clusters in tier 1 cities, for as little as INR 5,000( approx. $75) a month.

“I always wanted to make a direct impact on people’s lives – the ethos that got ingrained during my career in medicine. Improving lives of thousands of people, through redefining an industry, was something which immediately came close to heart. For me, ethos hasn’t changed, the method has,” said Nikhil Sikri, Co-founder and CEO, Zolo.

The backend ERP platform integrated with the Android App helps Zolo to have turnaround times and service levels which are highest in the industry. The tech claims to have helped the company to handle aggressive scale and operational intensiveness, without losing quality. “We believe there is a large market gap in the managed affordable living space targeted at students and young professionals moving into larger cities for employment and education opportunities. Zolo’s first principles approach to building a scalable cost-effective execution engine managed by their strong technology platform has allowed them to emerge as a leader in the market in a short duration,” said Sameer Brij Verma, Nexus Venture Partners. The company has also partnered with builders to start the concept of fully managed accommodations which is common in large cities such as Hong Kong and New York City. Not just investors, Zolo also has a healthy pipeline of “built-to-suit” managed accommodation properties under development where land owners are partnering with Zolo to manage them on an end-to-end basis and share profits.