YourOwnRoom: Bangalore startup helping millennials find apartments in big cities

Bangalore-based startup YourOwnRoom helps millennials find apartments in India’s big cities at reasonable prices.

It can be hard finding a place for young, urban singles to call their own in the city. Prices are generally inflated and it can be near to impossible to find something within reasonable distance of work.

And millennials are the ones who need these properties the most. According to this report, 68% of millennials are renting properties in India.

However, there is a shortage of places to live for a reasonable price, location, and atmosphere. The same can be said of any major city worldwide, but in India in particular, a place with 15% of homes left vacant, it can prove even harder. Furthermore, many of the empty properties are simply investments, brought by those already in a home, but unwilling to rent.

This is the issue that YourOwnRoom is trying to address. Co-founder Prabhat Kumar Tiwary said, “A place that lets you be… isn’t that the basic need of every human? … However accommodation hunting in cities today, can be a daunting task.”

YourOwnRoom is a professional end-to-end rental management platform helping apartment hunters find and live in a high quality furnished space, and allows the home owners to find and select tenants they can trust.

The tenants are screened prior to application to ensure that only the best renters find a place to live.

Founded in 2016 by Tiwary and Sachin Joshi, the startup was created to solve the problem they themselves experienced as bachelors in urban cities, realising it wasn’t just they who had this problem, they started YourOwnRoom. Last year it was awarded the Owler’s ‘Hot in Bangalore’ Award, and was featured in Silicon India’s Startup of the Year edition.

The platform is win-win situation for both tenant and landlord. By using a screening process for potential tenants, homeowners will be assured they are renting to a reliable, trusted individuals. In the past, owners have been skeptical about renting to singles.

“There is also no proper method to check the background of the tenant and so they are really insecure,” Tiwary said.

Those looking to rent simply have to download the app, available on both Android and iOS, or visit the website and fill in the where you want to live, your gender, and the type of accommodation you are looking for.

This includes Single, Shared, and Family accommodation. Once this is filled in, click search and you can browse rooms to rent.

From a quick search of my own, rooms have been offered for between Rs 8,900 and 9,900, by comparison, the average room to rent for singles in Delhi’s city centre is Rs 15,000.

Users also have the option to select the radius of their search, this can be anything from less than five to less than 12 kilometers. This is helpful for those looking for a place close to work, YourOwnRoom commits to helping tenants find a place no more than thirty minutes from the office

As for homeowners, they can sign up here to list their property and modify the requirements to their specifications. Owners can include the rent price, preferred gender, and general expectations about the type of tenant they desire.

The platform will go a long way in solving the problem of empty homes in India’s big cities, whilst also perhaps helping to change the minds of India’s homeowners with regards to millennial singles. YourOwnRoom can be the answer to thousands of young, single Indian’s problems of finding not just a place to live, but a place to call their own.