By Saurabh Garg, founder·11 min read·Published 2026-08-09

ZiffyHomes Wrote Down What It Learned. Five Lessons for Anyone Choosing Who Manages Their Flat

ZiffyHomes ran managed co-living in Delhi-NCR from 2015, wound the operation down through the pandemic, and came back in 2026 as software that owns no property and takes no share of rent. Sanchal Ranjan, Saurabh Kumar and Salil Agrawal then did the rare thing and published what went wrong, including the sentence that explains it. Most founders bury that page. Reading it is the cheapest education available to anyone about to hand their keys to a company.

I run a property management company. I am in the same category these three were in, facing the same arithmetic, and I would rather learn it from their write-up than from my own owners. This piece is not a verdict on ZiffyHomes. The company is back, the people are building again, and the honest post-mortem they published is worth more than most of what gets written about Indian rentals in a year.

Five lessons come out of it. Each one turns into a question you can ask whoever holds your keys, including us.

What happened, told straight

ZiffyHomes started in Gurugram in 2015. It took ready flats from owners, furnished them, and rented them by the room. The founders put ₹30 lakh of their own money into furnishing so the first owners could see the model work before they committed.

It grew. By March 2018 the company had more than 500 properties, 1,500 people living in them, and 15,000 customers served over two and a half years. It bought Fella Homes in February 2018 for about 800 rooms and Nivaasa in April 2018 for 12 hubs across four cities. Y Combinator invested $120,000 in the Summer 2018 batch. Average tenant stay was six months.

Then the pandemic arrived, and the model met a wall. The company wound down through 2020 and 2021. In 2026 it relaunched as a software product for owners and brokers.

Lesson one: the headline commission is not the money

ZiffyHomes charged owners 15% when the owner furnished the flat and 30% when ZiffyHomes furnished it. Those are among the highest rates the Indian market has seen. Revenue for the year to 31 March 2018 was ₹75 lakh across more than 500 properties.

That works out to about ₹15,000 per flat for the year.

Nothing was wrong with the pricing. The gap between a 30% headline and ₹15,000 of realised revenue is what running the model costs. Vacancy between tenants eats it. A six-month average stay means onboarding, the agreement, the deposit and the move-out all happen twice a year per flat. Furnishing capex lands before any rent does.

The lesson for you as an owner is the same arithmetic read backwards. When someone quotes you a management fee, the number tells you almost nothing about whether they can afford to do the work. Ask what the fee has to cover and how often the cycle repeats on your flat. A manager whose economics only work at full occupancy will behave like a manager whose economics only work at full occupancy.

Lesson two: the fixed promise is the fragile part

This is the sentence ZiffyHomes published, and it is the most useful line on their site:

"Asset-heavy co-living, it turned out, is a brutally fragile model when your customers suddenly cannot leave their homes and your lease obligations to owners do not care."

Read it from your side of the deal. The obligation that did not care was the payment owed to owners. It was the feature that made the offer attractive, and it was the thing that could not bend when the revenue bent.

That is the mechanism behind every fixed-rent arrangement in this category. A guarantee is a promise sitting on a company's balance sheet. It holds while the company holds. If the market that pays for it turns, the guarantee and the company weaken at the same time, which means the promise is thinnest on the day you need it.

None of this makes guaranteed rent dishonest. It makes it a credit decision. You are lending your vacancy risk to a company in exchange for certainty, and the price of that certainty is the company's survival.

Lesson three: a company can change hands and your money can stay behind

NestAway is the other data point in Indian residential rentals, and the public numbers are enough to make the point without any commentary.

NestAway raised about $116 million and was valued at $220 million in 2019. In June 2023 Aurum PropTech agreed to acquire up to 100% of it for ₹90 crore, about $11 million, and to put in a further ₹30 crore to steady the business. The brand continued under new ownership.

For an investor that is a markdown. For an owner or a tenant it is a different event. A sale moves the share register. It does not, on its own, move a deposit sitting in an operating account, or carry across the person who knew your flat, or transfer an unwritten understanding about how repairs get approved. Everything that was in writing survives a change of ownership. Everything that was a relationship starts again.

So the question is not whether a company might be sold. Good companies get sold. The question is which parts of your arrangement are written down well enough to survive it.

Lesson four: read what a company refuses to do

The rebuilt ZiffyHomes publishes three refusals on its about page: it will not take brokerage commission, it will not sit on your rent, it will not own real estate. It charges a flat monthly fee and says that fee is the whole business model.

Its terms go further. It holds no funds and acts as no escrow. Money moves from the tenant's bank to the owner's or broker's bank over UPI with the company never in the flow. It is not a party to any agreement between owner, broker and tenant. It does not arbitrate disputes. It does not claim its AI output is legally sufficient. Liability is capped at the lesser of twelve months of fees or ₹1,000.

Publishing that list is a service to the reader, and more companies in this category should copy it. A refusal is checkable in a way that a promise is not. Anyone can write "reliable". Writing "we will never hold your rent" costs something, which is what makes it information.

When you evaluate a manager, the list of what they will not do tells you more than the list of what they will. If they have not written one, ask for it in an email and keep the reply.

Lesson five: know whether you are buying software or a person

The two ZiffyHomes businesses sold two different products, and the difference is the one owners get wrong most often.

The first one sent people. It furnished flats, placed tenants, and stood between the owner and everything that happened in the building. That is expensive to run, which is the whole story of lesson one.

The second one sends information. It tracks rent, drafts agreements, triages maintenance requests, and keeps a ledger the owner and broker share. That is a real product and it is honest about its limits, which the ₹1,000 liability cap states in plain terms.

A ledger tells you the rent did not arrive. It does not knock on the door. When the tenant stops replying and the society sends a notice you cannot read, software shows you the problem and a person solves it. Both purchases are legitimate. Decide which one you are making, because the disappointment owners describe in this category is almost always someone who bought the first and expected the second.

The four questions this leaves you with

Ask in writing. Answers change when they have to be typed.

  1. What does your fee have to cover, and how often does the cycle repeat on my flat? Onboarding, agreement, deposit handling and move-out are the costly parts, and a six-month tenancy runs them twice a year.

  2. Do you owe me money when the flat is empty? If yes, you are extending credit to the company, and you should know that is what you are doing.

  3. Who holds the deposit, in which account, in whose name? Get the account arrangement written into the agreement, so it survives any change in who owns the company.

  4. Which parts of our arrangement are written down, and which are understandings? Then move the important understandings into the written part.

The standard we publish is five points: a named human, every rupee a line item, dated proof by default, an approval floor on your money, and a clean exit. Hold us to it as hard as you hold anyone else.

Frequently asked questions

Did ZiffyHomes shut down? The original ZiffyHomes, a managed co-living operator founded in Gurugram in 2015 and backed by Y Combinator in 2018, wound its operations down through 2020 and 2021. In 2026 the same founders relaunched the ZiffyHomes name as a software product for homeowners and brokers that owns no property and takes no share of rent. They are two different businesses under one brand.

Is guaranteed rent from a property management company safe for an NRI owner? Guaranteed rent transfers vacancy risk from you to the operator, and the operator can honour it only while it is solvent. Treat it as a credit decision. You are accepting a company's promise in place of market rent. Ask how long the guarantee runs, what ends it early, and what happens to the arrangement if the company is sold.

What happens to my security deposit if my property management company is sold or closes in India? A sale moves the company's shares and does not by itself move money held in its accounts. If the deposit sits in the company's own operating account, recovery runs through a consumer forum or insolvency, which takes time. If the account arrangement is written into your agreement and the deposit sits in a named account of its own, a change of ownership does not touch it.

What should an NRI owner ask before signing with a property manager in India? Ask what the management fee has to cover and how often the tenancy cycle repeats. Ask whether the company owes you money when the flat is empty. Ask who holds the security deposit, in which account and in whose name. Ask which parts of the arrangement are written down. Keep every answer in email.

What happened to NestAway? NestAway, an Indian home rental company, raised about $116 million and was valued at $220 million in 2019. In June 2023 Aurum PropTech agreed to acquire up to 100% of the company for ₹90 crore, about $11 million, and to invest a further ₹30 crore in the business. The brand continues to operate under Aurum's ownership.

Where we fit, and what we are not

I run 66 MG Road, an NRI property management company, so treat that as my bias. I have written about two companies in my own category and I am not neutral about the category, so here is our position stated flat.

We are small. Five paying customers, ten-plus properties across six cities, every one of them from my own network and none from a cold sale. We have spent ₹0 on paid acquisition. Our testimonial wall is empty, and an empty testimonial wall is the only honest state for a company that has not yet earned a full one.

Our employed teams stand in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Gurgaon run through vetted local partners, and we say so instead of implying an office in every city. We do not guarantee rent and we do not hold deposits in our operating account. Those are refusals, and lesson four is the reason we publish them.

For the longer version of how to judge anyone in this category, start with why NRIs do not trust property managers and what property management costs in India.

Saurabh Garg, founder, 66 MG Road

This piece reports what company statements and public records say. It is not legal, tax or investment advice. For your own contract, deposit arrangement or dispute, speak to your lawyer or chartered accountant.

Sources

Information on this page is as on 2026-08-09. Rules, rates, deadlines and government portals change without notice, so verify against the official source before you act. This page is for information only. It is not tax or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a qualified adviser who knows your position.