Indian backpacker hostel brand goSTOPS raises additional USD 1 million

New Delhi: Rapidly expanding backpacker hostel brand, goSTOPS, has raised an additional USD 1 million bridge round within 6 months of the last million dollar Pre-Series-A round concluded early this year in June. Showing continued commitment, the round was funded by existing investors – The Chennai Angels, Mumbai Angels, Yuj Ventures, Lead Angels, 1Crowd, Indian Angel Network, Chandigarh Angels Network in addition to new angel investors including Rohit Chanana of Sarcha Advisors.

The additional bridge round will help the company accelerate growth further given the strong tailwinds in youth leisure travel till it concludes its Series-A by June’22. The freshly infused funds will be utilized to aggressively acquire new budget hotels and rapidly grow its presence across the country. This move is in line with the renewed and rapid demand for strong post covid leisure travel that the youth are embarking on.

The company aims to disrupt and grab leading market share in the USD 12 billion Indian youth leisure travel opportunity. goSTOPS leases and transforms budget hotels and operates them as backpacker hostels. The community and design-led hotel transformation enables the company to harness efficiencies of shared economy and make high-quality youth-focused stays accessible within Gen-Z friendly budget of INR 500/- per night.

Pallavi Agarwal, Founder and CEO, goSTOPS commenting on the bridge funding said, “goSTOPS has grown 2.5X QoQ to ARR of USD 2.5 million in October 2021. The new bridge funding will allow us to leverage the opportunity presented to us in a post pandemic India to grow to USD 5 million ARR by June 2022 – that’s 5x YoY growth through a pandemic. We intend to cater to the exponentially growing market of youth travellers in India, who have stepped out to explore the country after a very stress-inducing two years of the pandemic.”

K. Chandran, CEO, The Chennai Angels, said, “We are extremely happy with the growth that goSTOPS has achieved since our last investment in the company. The strong validation of the product-market fit and business model resilience through the two covid waves as well as aggressive founders’ mindset to capitalise on the ‘down-time’ during the pandemic to pursue unprecedented growth were the key reasons for us to re-invest and lead this round.”

Nandini Mansighka, Co-Founder & CEO, Mumbai Angels Network, said, “Lack of quality travel accommodation for youth is a big market-need gap and at a price-point of INR 500 per night, goSTOPS is focussed on addressing the belly of this large market. The company, with its strong consumer understanding and full-stack operator model, has clearly found a way of solving this problem at scale. Brand’s high customer satisfaction score and strong unit economics while rapidly expanding through the pandemic were reasons enough to convince us to further invest and up our commitment in goSTOPS.”

Operating across 27 destinations in India, goSTOPS has hosted over 500K guests. To cater to the unique preferences of this target audience, the company also recently launched its experiences wing goEXPERIENCES to offer treks, multi-destination tours and in-destination experiences.