US: Kasa Living has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Ribbit Capital.
The latest round is non addition to $20 million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital less than a year ago. Participating investors also include RET Ventures, Zigg Capital, Allegion Ventures, and BoxGroup.
Kasa says it is “leading a new wave of innovation in the hospitality industry, leveraging its proprietary technology and institutional expertise to transform vacant and underutilised real estate into high-quality, trustworthy accommodations for travellers”.
To date, the company has entered into management agreements with multifamily and hotel property owners in 35 markets across 15 states.
“We see a generational opportunity to innovate in a beleaguered travel sector. Kasa aspires to build a global accommodations brand beloved by guests, indispensable to property partners, and desired by neighbors,” said Roman Pedan, founder and CEO of Kasa. “This raise allows us to grow our technology team significantly to power a flexible and distributed hospitality offering that delivers on our mission.”
Over the past nine months, Kasa says it has maintained occupancy rates of approximately 75 per cent (more than double the hospitality industry average), expanded units under management by 50 per cent, and launched in five new cities.
“What Kasa customers see is just the tip of the iceberg. The enormous operational complexity behind the scenes is tackled by Kasa’s technology platform, allowing them to seamlessly host a large, diverse, and growing network of distributed accommodation units efficiently,” said Nick Shalek, general partner at Ribbit Capital. “In defining a new, software-driven way to deliver high-quality hospitality, we see Kasa doing to hotels what Amazon Web Services (AWS) did to on-premise servers.”
Kasa also provides an end-to-end solution for its property partners. Lela Cirjakovic, executive vice president of operations at Waterton, a national multifamily owner and operator, said: “We selected Kasa as our short-term rental provider of choice after an exhaustive search. Kasa stood out for its relentless focus on the community and partnership. Their innovative process and technology help us provide a better neighbour and guest experience, and ultimately a more harmonious community.”
Roman Pedan was previously an early member of KKR’s Private Equity Real Estate team. He founded Kasa in 2016 alongside pursuing his MBA at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and was joined by ex-Airbnb Product leader Craig Minoff, who now oversees product and operations at Kasa.
