icanstay Making the Luxury Stay Affordable for Middle Class

ICANSTAY.COM, the flagship portal of First Time Travellers Ltd., (FTTL) has recently raised a fresh round of funding of Rs 1.30 Crore from an angel investor Manoj Prasad, executive chairman at Singapore-based venture capital and management advisory firm MP Morgan Capital Partners Pvt. Ltd. It is a voucher-based travel portal known for making a luxury hotel stay available for business travellers

This is an addition to Rs 2.24 Crore raised a few months earlier from the same investor who has picked up 6.54 percent stake in the company. This investment values icanstay at more than Rs 36 Crore, in a short span of just nine months since its commercial launch.

With this recent investment, the company plans for its expansion over 100 cities and partner over 1000- four and five star hotels. The company further also plans to invest in technology to improve the customers experience on their platform across mobile and web.

Launched in February 2017, icanstay generated a revenue of Rs 40 Crore in its first full year of operations. “We are strongly placed to help hotels fill their vacant rooms and increase their yield per room. Further we are continuously strengthening our product offering and user experience. We are targeting a turnover of Rs 700 Crores by 2020,” said Puneet Gupta, COO and Co-Founder, FTTL.

So how does icanstay helps the hotel industry in contributing increased room occupancy rates? On asking, Gupta explained, “The branded hotel industry in India currently has approx. 1.25 lakh rooms to offer. This is projected according to HVS research to go to 1.65 lakhs by 2020. On average, around 38 percent of these rooms go unsold daily. At an average revenue rate of Rs 5800 per room, this translates into lost revenue opportunity of Rs 10,000 Crore for these hotels. Projected for future, this would mean a lost potential of more than 13,000 crore by 2020.  We at icanstay are poised to fill 1 percent of these unsold rooms at the lowest as Rs 2,999.”

After partnering with four and five star hotel, the company have recently started offering luxury holiday packages. “Our next immediate goal is to add international hotels in the current financial year,” Gupta informed.

In terms of the target audiences, icanstay have two target groups, first is the aspirational Indians who want to upgrade to luxury, second if the Salespeople who are always on the move and currently stay in budget hotels aspiring to stay in Luxury. Till now, it has been encouraged by the abundant response from its targeted customer group in the aspirational middle-income traveller segment.