Prabhat Kumar's claim is that co-living was never the business — it was one demography inside a much larger one. YourOwnRoom started in 2016 on a clean supply-and-demand read: young Indians pouring into four to six cities that cannot house them, set against a stock of homes lying idle, unsold or half-built. Six years in, he says that framing covered barely 20% of the problem. COVID made the argument for him: roughly 70% of co-living tenants went home, revenue fell while costs stayed put, and a pre-pandemic mix of 80% singles and 20% families settled at 50-50 — with families trading two bedrooms for three and volunteering another ₹10,000 a month to do it. The rebuilt company treats the asset owner, not the tenant, as the customer, because most owners hold a flat as a financial product whose return is rental yield plus capital appreciation. That reframing is what kills the bed count: beds belong to hotels, while assets under management, order book and utilisation describe whether an operator actually owns anything. YourOwnRoom manages about a million square feet worth ₹400 crore across some 400 properties in Bangalore and Pune, grew revenue roughly 70% in 2021-22, and is raising a pre-Series A to fold smaller operators onto its platform and reach five to ten million square feet — a ₹100-250 crore revenue business — while adding new cities two or three people at a time. The bet underneath is that hybrid work settles near 50-50, homes must now hold work as well as sleep, and whoever manages that inventory well owns the category.
Worth your time if you are
Landlords with one flat and no plan for it
Founders who discovered their market was only a segment
Proptech operators choosing between beds and square feet
Renters whose home now has to double as an office
Investors sizing India's organised rental stock
