Dubai-based short-term rentals platform Silkhouse has raised $7.75 million in seed funding, which it plans to use for expansion in South Asia, Southeast Asia and the MENA region.
Venture capital firms participating in the round include Nua Capital, Nordstar, Global Founders Capital, Edge Ventures, Whiteboard Capital and Venturesock. A few international family offices and proptech founders also joined this round.
General manager Ahan Bhojani And Ashmin Varma He founded Silkhouse last year after identifying a $13 billion market opportunity for property owners in emerging markets, particularly MENA, South Asia and Southeast Asia. In an interview with TechCrunch, Bojani, an HBS and Yale graduate who previously worked in roles that required extensive travel, such as management consulting and investment banking, said he was inspired to start Silkhouse by a change in the nature of less travel. Business owners after the pandemic.
“At some point when I was building software for SMBs to book and manage travel globally, I saw businesses start doing things differently,” the CEO told TechCrunch on a call. “Businesses used to stay in hotels. But interestingly, now they’re starting to ask for short-term rentals, you know, basically the Airbnb of the world. And that’s when I started scratching my head and thinking about this whole space from a supply and demand problem.
The pandemic has changed the nature of travel, he said. According to him, while the frequency of leisure and business trips has decreased, the average duration of the trips has increased. His interpretation of this phenomenon was that these journeys were becoming more nomadic and long-term thinking. But while platforms like Airbnb have incredibly concentrated demand to meet supply in the US and Europe, it’s a different experience in emerging markets where supply isn’t sufficiently concentrated to meet Airbnb’s demand. This is where Silkaus comes in. We are providing an operating system that includes the tools for both large and small property owners to digitize the process of processing short-term rentals and monetize and manage their properties. The company says it allows property owners to list multiple or single units on the platform with an average revenue increase of 20-40%.
“Frankly, finding a good Airbnb in these markets is like pulling a needle out of a haystack. That’s what we’re solving for,” Bojani said. Our biggest vision is to bring quality, control and technology to space. We exist to provide more people with access to high-quality short-term rentals.
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Basically Silkhouse takes rental properties from property owners (currently in Dubai) and manages distribution, pricing, revenue management and coverage from a digital perspective; Airbnb is one of nearly 60 different distribution channels used by Silkhouse. Meanwhile, the company has built tools on the back end, including a marketplace for third-party providers to find these rentals and manage operations.
According to the CEO, Dubai was the ideal market to launch Silkhouse because its infrastructure offers the most advanced arrangements for short-term rentals, incorporates the progressive government regulation of proptech, and accommodates the diverse needs of different types of consumers. Silcaus’ engineering team, split across the UAE and Bangalore, is currently building the technology stack, the company said in a statement. Chief Operating Officer Varma leads the team, which is part of a 20-person workforce with experts from Microsoft, Airbnb, Kerim and Deliveroo.
Bhojani claims Silkhouse is currently part of the top 3% of operators in the city in terms of units under management. The proptech startup, which has grown more than 10x in revenue in the last 12 months, said it plans to increase the supply of assets on the platform to top 1% in the next two months.
Silkaus estimates that the market opportunity could grow to $18 billion over the next four years. With planned operations in Asia’s leading economic centers and the MENA region, providing guests with high-end accommodation options and allowing enterprises to choose longer stays for their employees on the Silk Roads will be critical to capturing a significant share of this market share.
“We are excited to see Silkhaus emerging as the leading short-term rental platform across Asia, and especially partnering with Ahahan and his team, who have proven their ability to disrupt two large and fragmented industries in a short period of time: real estate and hospitality,” said Ole Ruch, Managing Partner at Nordstar.
