Student housing platform Placio bags $2 Mn Pre Series A round from Prestellar Ventures

Student housing startup Placio has raised $2 million Pre Series A round from Prestellar Ventures in its maiden funding raising event. The company will use the funds to expand its capacity and to provide a conducive environment for student living.

Placio offers fully furnished private and shared accommodation for college-going students at affordable price points.

Founded in 2016 by Rohit Pateria, Ankush Arora, and Atul Kumar Singh-  the company says to have availability of 1,000 beds. It also hopes to expand it to at least 10,000 beds in the next 12-16 months.

Besides accommodation, it claims to provide facilities like internet connectivity, recreational spaces, housekeeping, and food services.

The startup was incubated by Amity Business Incubator (Noida). Prior to raising this round, Placio was a pure play bootstrapped venture. The company had a revenue of Rs 25 lakh in FY17. It claimed to cross over Rs 15 crore revenue in current fiscal.

Also Read: Students-focused fintech startup SlicePay secures $2 Mn series-A funding

Placio competes with a slew of accommodation aggregators including Nestaway, Zocalo, Homers, Homigo, Campus Ville among several others. Bengaluru-based NestAway losses increased by 163 per cent to Rs 97.2 crore  in FY17 as compared to the previous fiscal.

NestAway had raised $50 million from UC-RNT, Tiger Global and IDG Ventures India in November last year. Delhi-based Stanza Living secured Rs 13 crore Pre Series A round from Matrix Partners and Accel Partners.

Real estate major JLL had outlined that about 34 million students enroll for higher education, of which nearly 26.6 million students migrate from home cities. Cities with facilities of higher education can provide accommodation to just 18 to 20 percent of the aforementioned 76 percent students.

The funding news was first reported by ET.