Chaya is the first space-sharing platform in Bangladesh, founded by Farhia Tabassum and Mehraab Anwar for multi-purposes that can be rented out for all kinds of events. Earlier this year, this platform pivoted to housing for bachelors through co-living. Now, they are using tech to connect the landlords with the tenants while managing the property and the tenants in the middle.
The story of Chaya started when Farhia first worked with her co-founder Mehraab Anwar at a marketing agency. That is when they first realized that they wanted to work together. Two years from then on, both of them got together and started Chaya. Before founding Chaya, Farhia had joined a startup, which connected our medium-to-small-sized RMD factories to the fashion brands abroad.
To collect the funds for the business, they initially reached out to their network of people who could connect them with an angel investor interested in this field or in investing in startups. That is how they found our first angel investor. It took them around 3-4 months to finalize the deal with the investors. Now they are looking for angels who are working with the real estate industry and trying to connect with them to raise funds for their startup.
Farhia is a strong advocate of women’s entrepreneurship. “There are a maximum of 10% women in most of the events that I have been to through work and I think it is very sad to see that”. Farhia laments, “For me to be a female founder and not be able to hire more women is sad and depressing. I wish that there were more eligible women out there to hire in the workforce.” To her, the families need to realize the importance of women’s education and need to understand that two people are needed to put their hands in the house. As marriage is usually at the top of most families’ requirements for success if the families are told for a household to run efficiently, two people working would be beneficial, then it would be one way to encourage the families and husbands to let their daughters or wives work because sadly women do require the husband’s permission in some cases. Women also need to persist towards their goals without giving up and take more leadership roles in society. Finally, she says that we should put pressure on big corporations to be more strict about rules and workplace harassment and exercise a zero-tolerance policy against harassment.
Chaya works as a medium to connect both the landlords and the tenants. A lot of the landlords have to deal with their tenants monthly by having to take care of the maintenance, do site tours and collect payments. Chaya is trying to take these hassles away from the landlords by taking care of their apartments, managing their apartments, dealing with the tenants, and dealing with any maintenance that comes up. For the tenants, they are providing them access to a single bedroom that they could rent out while having access to an entire apartment and only paying for a single bedroom. The tenants can also enjoy amenities like Wifi, all the utilities, and the furnishing of an entire house. Since the tenants are mainly bachelors coming from different places, they can connect to a community after coming to a new town and not knowing anybody. Another main key service of this platform is verification which is a key concern for the landlords when they are renting out to bachelors. Before each tenant moves in, every one of the tenants is verified through one of Chaya’s third-party KYC vendors. This alleviates the security concern of the landlords.
To Farhia, one of the things that differentiate her from a lot of people is the ability to take risks. She has an attitude where she would see through the end even if five years down the line she is coming back with all zeroes without being successful.
For Chaya, the supply of the sites has always been an issue regardless of the business model. People don’t want to generally rent out to strangers. So, it has been very difficult to convince the people to put their trust in Chaya. However, since both Mehraab and Farhia are bachelors themselves, it is easier for them to understand the pinpoints of our customers. “That’s why we can build the product around them and for them”, Farhia said.
Right now, Chaya is planning to launch its website sometime this month to attract anyone with an extra furnished room, looking for a roommate or people with furnished apartments who want to rent out. These people can easily list themselves on the website, which will allow them to reach or pop lead to the website faster. As soon as they launched this platform, the seats of two of the co-living units had been filled up fairly quickly. In terms of value-added services, they are building some easier property management tools to provide the landlords and tenants with better services.
Translated By: Farzana Fahim Adrita
