PAJASA Apartments Success Story of Facilitating Serviced Apartments for the Corporates!

Chayanika Goswami, Anik Banerjee

Jun 28, 2022 — 10 min read

Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by PAJASA Apartments.

Business tourism is booming in India. The corporate sector is expanding and many need to travel to different places for meetings, conferences, exhibitions, and more.

India has been the 5th fastest growing business travel destination from 2010-2019. With this increasing number of business tourists, demand for quality accommodation is also increasing. This is giving rise to an increased demand of service apartments, the segment of which is growing at a rate of over 8% per annum and is declared as one of the fastest-growing wings of the hospitality industry.

To cater to this rising demand, PAJASA Apartments is offering beautiful and comfortable serviced apartments in top locations of the country.

StartupTalky interviewed PAJASA Apartments co-founder Arpit Awasthi to know more about the offerings and operations of the company.

Startup Name	PAJASA Apartments
Headquarter	Mumbai
Sector	Hospitality
Co-founders	Paras Sangwan, Arpit Awasthi
Founded	2014
Parent Organization	PAJASA Stay Solution Pvt. Ltd.
Website	pajasaapartments.com

About PAJASA Apartments and How it Works
PAJASA Apartments - Founders & Team
How was PAJASA Apartments Started?
PAJASA Apartments - Mission
PAJASA Apartments - Name, Tagline and Logo
PAJASA Apartments - Business Model and Revenue Model
PAJASA Apartments - Growth
PAJASA Apartments - Startup Challenges
PAJASA Apartments - Awards & Recognitions
PAJASA Apartments - Competitors
PAJASA Apartments - Future Plans

About PAJASA Apartments and How it Works

PAJASA Apartments is a Mumbai-based startup that provides world-class serviced apartments (with working kitchens) on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to corporates. The service apartments are offered on a pay as per usage basis, which costs 40-50% less than hotels. Besides, the apartments are located near to the work location across all metro cities in India (max 5 Km distance) to assure the corporate employees complete their projects within their time limit with no traffic/time hassles.

PAJASA envisions to be alternatives to guest houses that the companies take on a monthly rental basis, which invariably increases their fixed costs. PAJASA works to reduce companies' fixed costs to variable cost by providing the pay-as-per-usage facility. By facilitating such a shift, it helps in cutting down the hotel cost by around 40% to firms/organizations.

PAJASA follows a step-by-step process to ensure smooth functioning and a hassle-free experience for its clients. First, the PAJASA team surveys a property at a given location and signs a contract with the owner. The pictures of the property along with the details are then put on their application and website. Once, the company administration requests a booking for their guests through mail or the application, the team checks the best accommodation available near the work location (a maximum of 5 km in metros); and checks availability. The system, then, generates a booking. A confirmation voucher is sent to the guests and the company administration as well. The guests can check all the details and the location through software and apps like Google Maps. Pajasa also has a 24x7 support number, which is available for any escalations.

PAJASA Apartments are currently available in Mumbai, New Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Gurugram, and Noida.

PAJASA Apartments - Founders and Team

Paras Sangwan and Arpit Awasthi co-founded PAJASA Apartments in 2014.

Paras Sangwan

Paras Sangwan is currently the CEO of PAJASA Apartments. He looks after the Business (sales) division of the company. Paras did his Post Graduate Diploma in Foreign Trade from Savitribai Phule, Pune University after completing his Post Graduate Diploma in Business Management from IIeBM College. Paras Sangwan, who also heads PAJASA Agro, as the CEO, previously served as the Business Development Manager at PAJASA Apartments. Prior to founding this firm, Sangwan was a Business Development Executive at Advent Infosoft and then a Marketing Manager at Lake Bloom Residency.

Passionate about starting his own business, Paras participated in an inter-college B-Plan competition and secured 2nd position there. He came to Mumbai to find an idea to fulfill his dream. Before starting his own venture, Paras worked in a serviced apartment company, where he got to learn a lot about the functioning of the sector and the gaps exiting in the sector.

Arpit Awasthi

Arpit Awasthi was the Founder-CTO at PAJASA Apartments and used to handle the technology domain of the startup before leaving the company in August 2020. Awasthi was a BSc Mathematics student at PPN Degree College, Kanpur, but he dropped out of his college education. Arpit eventually obtained a BTech in Electronics and Communications Engineering. After serving as a freelance Video Production Specialist, Awasthi served Accenture, before moving on to the entrepreneurial way where he founded Edge N Roots, where he remained the Founder for over 12 years. He joined Pajasa Apartments in the meanwhile in February 2017 and was known as the Co-founder and CTO at PAJASA Apartments. He is currently serving as a Technical Analyst at Coforge.

Paras met Arpit in a PG in Mumbai; then, Arpit was working in Accenture and have been working on web technologies. Arpit already created a company at his engineering days, keen to do something new. Paras shared his idea to him and asked him to be the co-founder of PAJASA Apartments as CTO. Paras, after that, left his job in March 2014 and opened a small three sitting office at Powai Plaza. As Arpit was working in a company, they had only weekends to work to develop the technology.

Currently, PAJASA Apartments has a dedicated team of 8+ members, including a core developer, digital expert, accounting professional, content writer, sales manager, and photographer.

How was PAJASA Apartments Started?

As a General Manager in the hospitality sector, Paras realized that most of the clients looked for service apartments instead of hotels for long stays as these were cost-effective. However, in the absence of a one-point contact for service apartment owners and corporate clients, company administrations either had to book apartments through several vendors or ended up booking hotels.

This left Paras thinking about ways of decreasing hotel costs for companies and removing their fixed cost by eliminating the guest house concept.

Most service apartment owners generally have properties in one or two areas. So for every location, the administration of a company has to find many service apartment vendors, which is a tedious task

Paras shared the concept with Arpit, his flatmate, who worked with Accenture as a team leader and had a good knowledge of web technologies. With an investment of 5 lakh and two employees, they founded PAJASA Apartments (PAJAS in Sanskrit means growth) in 2014.

The day we deployed our first cloud application, we had breakfast (Idli) at 4:30 am Monday morning near IIT Powai (Maddu Mess) - says Arpit recalling the early days of the startup.

PAJASA Apartments - Mission

PAJASA Apartments' mission statement is “YOUR SECOND HOME IN EVERY CITY”.

PAJASA Apartments - Name, Tagline and Logo

PAJASA came from the Sanskrit word "PAJAS", which refers to the goddess Laxmi, and resembles growth.

PAJASA Apartments Logo

PAJASA Apartments - Business Model and Revenue Model

PAJASA Apartments is the only serviced apartment aggregator company in India, working exclusively with corporates to maintain a high-class standard of corporate stay. None of the OTAs (Online Travel Agency) have created filters for the apartment category like 1 BHK/2 BHK to date on their website.

PAJASA Apartments has a B2B business model, which is simple yet effective. It works on a margin basis from apartment owners to corporate. It fixes tariffs with apartment owners as well as corporate for the contracted period in the beginning. This tariff remains the same throughout the contracted period and does not vary with season or stay duration, unlike other stay formats. Once a contract is signed with PAJASA Apartments, a company sends PAJASA a booking request for their guest with details either from mail or PAJASAs' application. PAJASA technology eventually creates a ticket for the request and checks apartment availability. There is a manual check system in place, and the same ensures the best apartment is provided to the guest. Then, the system creates a booking and sends the relevant voucher and SMS to the guests and the admins.

PAJASA Apartments has a mechanism in place that shows monthly invoices, and similarly, they provide their clients with one invoice for a month that creates value addition to the clients.

PAJASA Apartments - Growth

PAJASA Apartments has seen some growth. Operating exclusively in the hospitality industry that truly focuses on the serviced apartments section focusing on the businesses and their operations in India, it has surely got the early bird advantage for the same. Billed as "Your Second Home", PAJASA Apartments now offers serviced apartments in 8 top Indian cities, and the top locations within them, which includes, Worli (Mumbai), Powai (Mumbai), Cyber City (Gurgaon), Viman Nagar (Pune), T Nagar (Chennai) and more.

PAJASA Apartments also includes some premium companies as their clients, which includes Google, Tata, Nokia, Amazon, Accenture, L&T, HDFC Bank, Samsung, Domino's, Muthoot Finance, and more. The company also boasts of being covered by some of the leading media companies like The Hindu, TechStory, YourStory, KnowStartup, Inventiva, and more.

PAJASA Apartments has worked on SEO and their first 300+ clients came through SEO itself. As of now, PAJASA Apartments has achieved an RMV (Room Booking Value) of INR 7 Cr till Nov 2019. Here's a brief section pointing the growth highlights of PAJAS Apartments:

Total room night boked till date is 25,000+
Yearly growth has last been estimated to be over 200%
Corporate Client added is 300+
200+ locations added in the top 10 cities in India for the company
5000 room keys listed on the website

PAJASA Apartments - Startup Challenges

Serviced Apartment is a very new concept in India, and each city has its own rule for serviced apartments. While in Mumbai, all serviced apartments add electricity bills to their regular tariff, in Delhi, the apartment owners are charged extra for the electricity consumed. To manage these hassles, the company created its own set of rules, and based on it, it signs contracts with serviced apartment owners across India.

Generally, serviced apartments are considered between BnB and Hotels in stay classification, so most cities have their own format. The PAJASA team is trying to achieve a balanced standard for its corporate clients to enjoy their stay with all world-class amenities in their budget. PAJASA Apartments team ensures that all amenities and services are made available irrespective of location.

Another challenge for PAJASA was to organize apartments starting from stay inquiry of the corporates and businesses, to bookings, guest stay, billings, and feedback flow to enable apartment owners to manage their apartment without any hassle. To overcome such a challenge, they have created a full online web application that will help the whole process, from onboarding a corporate or a serviced apartment inventory to creating bookings/Invoices/Reports, easy and fully automatic. They strive to make booking management easy for corporate as well as apartment owners.

Serviced apartments are very different than hotels, so it is not possible to seek any inspiration from any hotel application to manage bookings. PAJASA has, therefore, created its own web application from scratch and regularly updates it on a scenario basis and new use cases, which are very different from the Hotel Industry.

PAJASA Apartments - Awards & Recognitions

Some of the recognitions received by the company are:

It was appointed as a panelist in the “Food and Hospitality Trade Show”
It won the “Innovative Software Platform for Service Apartment” award in the Technology category, at the India International Hospitality Expo.

PAJASA Apartments - Competitors

PAJASA Apartments do not have any direct competitor. Though there are many indirect competitors working in this area, no one is working specifically on serviced apartments for corporates. As said by Paras, even none of the OTAs (Online Travel Agency) have created filters for apartment categories like 1 BHK/2 BHK to date on their website.

PAJASA Apartments - Future Plans

PAJASA is currently looking to increase the total list of rooms that are there listed on their website, and also expand their clients. There is also a plan to increase the team size, and make the booking process fully automated. However, as said by Arpit, the company prefers organic growth and is not looking for investors just yet. Though the company is currently working exclusively with corporates, in the future the team wants to establish PAJASA Apartments as a pre-eminent global service apartment company - the first choice of guests, team members, and corporates.

As short-term corporate projects/assignments are increasing day by day and company resources need a homely stay for their short duration to stay with family, the services provided by PAJASA Apartments have immense potential to grow and accrue profits.

FAQs

What is PAJASA Apartments?

PAJASA Apartments is a Mumbai-based startup operating in the serviced apartment segment, which enables companies and professionals to book fully furnished, quality rooms for their short/long or extended stays.

Where is the PAJASA Apartments headquarters?

The PAJASA Apartments headquarters is in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Who is the Founder of PAJASA Apartments?

PAJASA Apartments has been founded by Paras Sangwan and Arpit Awasthi, where Arpit has left his role while Paras is still serving as the Founder and CEO of the company.

What is the PAJASA Apartments' mission?

PAJASA Apartments operates with a mission statement that says “YOUR SECOND HOME IN EVERY CITY”.

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