Business Leader recently sat down with Nakul Sharma, the founder and CEO of HOSTMAKER – the largest VC-backed hospitality management company in the world.

The British firm is rapidly expanding across Europe, having recently expanded into Florence, Cannes and Madrid to include 7 major European cities – despite Brexit

Nakul explains how his company has achieved 400% year-on-year growth, raised funds for expansion and what it means to be recognised as one of the top 100 Asian tech entrepreneurs in the UK.

WHY DID YOU CREATE THE COMPANY? I launched the business in May 2014, following the boom in Airbnb, looking to bring a level of hospitality expertise – which is my background – to the homestay market by offering full-service management.

I had just co-written a paper on Airbnb’s impact on the hotel industry – specifically, how the business could benefit hotels and how the two should work closely together in the future – and it seemed like the market was ready for it.

The idea was, and still is, to bring a Hilton-level quality to the diversity of homestay experiences, for all travellers – from couples to big groups.

For me, this was the future of hospitality, so I left InterContinental Hotels Group to dedicate myself full-time to testing the HOSTMAKER concept. I knew it would be a risk but the signs were strong that this had potential to become big.

My wife later joined me on the venture, leaving her job as a lawyer, and together we put £50,000 of our own money into the business to get it off the ground. We were already Airbnb ‘Superhosts’ so we had a good understanding of the issues faced by both guests and hosts. Still, we wanted to get more concrete evidence, so we took the plunge and turned our home into a test home, while we moved into rental accommodation ourselves.

The big break came when our second customer wrote a glowing one-page review on Airbnb which was seen by the company in San Francisco. On the back of this, we were invited to speak at their first host conference – which significantly helped funding efforts. Three rounds of funding later and HOSTMAKER has secured over £20m in investments.

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