Tag Archives: SaffronStays

Micro-hospitality brand SaffronStays has launched its first-ever training centre to facilitate 360-degree training locals who can be employed as cooks and caretakers in vacation homes across the country. The brand will teach, train and empower 1500 individuals in skills ranging from hygiene to health-care, and cooking to concierge. Tejas Parulekar, Founder, SaffronStays, says, “We are an inclusive brand. Our caretakers are our ‘Moment of Truth’ since they are first recall points of brand experience, and hence training them was a priority. The training centre in Panvel is our first giant step towards skills development, and would over time, become a part of our CSR activity. We would eventually look at top hospitality brands to collaborate and co-create the modules to train the staff”. The first successful test run involved caretakers from SaffronStays 9 Palms, Alibaug, SaffronStays Sanskriti, Kashi, and SaffronStays Little Paradise, Murud. The caretakers were imparted in-depth knowledge of local dishes that covered over 25 recipes for breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner. Various types of service-enhancing modules were taught during the three-day session. This included styling and setting up of community tables, table decoration and flower arrangement using locally-grown flaura. The aim is to cater to the larger goal of running 500 homes and providing a parallel support of skilled caretakers.

SaffronStays, which started with one property in October 2015 in Matheran called SaffronStays Parsi Manor, announced its expansion plans to other parts of the country. Devendra Parulekar, Co-Founder, SaffronStays, says, “We currently have 28 properties and plan to add 40 more by the end of December 2017. The goal is to have over 2,000 properties managed and branded by SaffronStays in the next five to seven years. Now that we have cracked the product-market fit, achieved unit-level and even transaction-level profitability, and also understood all the operational problems associated with the model and figured out ways to overcome these problems, we think it is time to raise some serious money to rapidly scale the business.” According to the company, it has clocked over USD 1 million in revenues in less than 19 months since it started. SaffronStays is largely operational around Mumbai, Pune, Goa and a few chosen locations in Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.