HotelnStudio founder entwined with City govt to convert the 100-room facility as COVID care centre

Shibabrata Bhaumik

Founder and CEO of disruptive peer-to-peer hospitality business HotelnStudio, Shibabrata Bhaumik, grown an idea that stemmed from overbooked hotels into a 10 million dollar start-up.

The startup was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021 and its business dropped by 50% in a little over four weeks in February 2021.

However, as recent lockdowns eased and acted as a boom, more travelers opted to book homes instead of hotels, helping HotelnStudio post a surprise profit for the early 2nd quarter. The Delhi-NCR based firm gained from increased interest in renting homes away from major cities.

Recently, the chain entwined with the Utter Pradesh City government, and 100 rooms set up has been used for setting up a COVID Health Centre; the hotel staff was provided with protective gear and given basic training for handling patients with symptoms. As per Shibabrata "all the services including rooms, housekeeping, disinfection, and food for the patients will be provided by the hotel however the medical services in the hotel will be provided by the linked hospital. The linked private hospital shall admit positive patients in their extended COVID hospitals as per the patients' medical condition and in case such patients turn severe at any point of time during their stay in the hotel, he/she shall be transferred/admitted to the linked private hospitals at its scheduled rates."

Shibabrata admits, that the startup Hotelnstudio is struggling to keep itself afloat as coronavirus ravages the global hotel industry. He added, "the company had no option but to stop expansion plans, reduce operations, furlough few of its employees as it struggled to pay salaries.

Notably, the government did not come up with any concrete relief measures for the hotel aggregate companies like HotelnStudio. So to keep the chain alive, Shibabrata convinced the existing VCs of his ongoing business PayQ to fund his new start-up. The investors asked if there was anything similar to what he was trying to build. Bhaumik explains HotelnStudio will be billed as Airbnb of India, in a country that lacks a steady supply of budget hotel chains, HotelnStudio does not have an international competitor who will breathe down its way. So when it comes to discounting and cash burning, H&S possibly has the least amount of burning and so faces favorable economics on its journey forward.

‘SHIBABRATA BHAUMIK's JOURNEY SO FAR

Born in Kolkata, West Bengal to an engineer Father, Bhaumik displayed an entrepreneurial streak as early as grade school. After completing his schooling at Kendriya Vidyalaya in Delhi, his business flings continued with a scheme to resell used computers and after he earned a master's degree in 2006 in International Business, he started a web development business from India for overseas clients.

Few Venture capitalists from Russia and Germany showered 5 million USD on Shibabrta's innovative approach in 2015 and motivated him to create PayQ, a unique high-risk merchant account company, which uses cryptocurrencies and blockchains to build transactions, networks for corporations.

In the year 2018, Bhaumik wanted to explore unequivocally distinctive dimensions, way apart from his expertise of financial knowledge. He founded HotelnStudio.com, a peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation portal that aims to standardize the service apartments into full functional hotels in the non-branded hospitality sector.

HotelnStudio (H&S) manages to solve the issue of affordability, cleanliness as well as the availability of budget hotels across all Tier-I and Tier-II cities in the country, especially Post Covid. Even if Bhaumik knew the technicalities of business, still, it wasn't a walk in the park. In fact, in the era of start-ups, he had to face several difficulties in trying to make his unconventional idea work.

Shibabrata gained enough success by understanding business needs and building something that people want. It's not always easy to get a start-up funded. But nowadays you don't have to travel to Silicon Valley and have lunch with venture capitalists to get money.

When asked Shibabrata about his maiden over, he was afraid but yet modest to admit that he was not sure if HnS would ever work. Also, he admitted that his concept of HnS was actually a true copy of the business model of Airbnb, mixed with a homestay!

Shibabrata has been a wayfarer himself and traveled across the world before launching HnS. He had discovered that the problem with budget hotels was bigger than just availability, so, to counter other issues, he launched HnS. Currently, HnS accommodations are available in 20 cities in India-Gurgaon, Delhi, Jim Corbett National Park, Goa, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Noida, Rishikesh, Nainital, Manali, Shimla, Jaisalmer & Mussoorie.