New in town? CoHo takes care of not just housing but your social needs too

From providing you a home to getting you roomies, CoHo is blending tech with comfort for millennials

What is the single most painful hurdle you have had to face as a young professional or student in a new city? If you said it was finding a decent accommodation, CoHo might be able to help. And, if you said it was finding mates for a beer pong party, again, CoHo’s got your back.

When it comes to finding a decent place to stay, “finding” and “decent” are the operative words. The decent part often gets lost in the mix as you settle for a pad close to work or just civilisation in general. Besides, it doesn’t break the bank! The pain point that people -- usually millennials -- face in the process is the lack of uniform basic standards of living to expect at home.

Plug and play

“The PG and rented accommodation market for young professionals and students doesn’t have a fixed standard of quality and, often, the experience of finding and living in one can at best be rated a generous three or four on ten. We aim to bring that up to eight, if not ten,” says CoHo co-founder Uday Lakkar. “The idea was to provide everything you need for a reasonable standard of living in a plug-and-play format, aided and backed by technology – all of that as free from hassles as possible,” explains Amber Sajid, Uday’s partner and the chief operating officer.

Left your PS at home? CoHo has you covered. Residents enjoy a group gaming session at one of CoHo's villas.

CoHo will get you flats that you can share with roommates, either in a single-room format or on a shared basis. Or, you can even opt for one of its villas that house from 20 to 100 residents, either on a single room or (mostly) a shared-room basis. The rooms are already equipped with most of the things you need or want, including non-glitchy WiFi and furniture that’s not an eyesore. 

Ready to move in from day one: All you need are your clothes 

In keeping with the plug-and-play model, the rooms are ready to go. You move in with just your suitcase and find everything needed for a reasonable modicum of comfort. The rooms are also fitted with digital meters to track your electricity consumption. Power is one of the few things, along with the meal plan, which you’ll pay for over and above the base price that CoHo charges for its rooms; the digital meter ensures you end up paying only for as much as you consume. 

You don't have to pay or fret over an AC going bad or the flush not working 
 

Whether you opt for a villa or flat, you are provided with CoHo’s concierge app. This app is the heart of the technology-enabled “hassle free” living the company swears by. If your AC breaks down in the middle of summer, you needn’t fret or go looking for an electrician or call the company. Instead, let CoHo know about the issue over its app and it will quickly fix the issue for you. The app lets you pay for any CoHo services that you avail of, and also lets you rate all these services. And, it doesn’t stop there – CoHo has partnered with third-party vendors like The Beer Café, Burger Singh, Max Healthcare and Inner Chef, whose services CoHo residents can avail of through the app and also get discounts on them.

Breakfast is included in your rent: Dinner and lunch plans cost Rs 2,500 

Of course, with a decent accommodation comes decent food. While the base charge you pay at the villa covers your breakfast, you have to opt for a meal plan that covers your daily dinner and lunch on weekends. Remember, most of CoHo’s residents are young professionals who are rarely in for lunch. The plan costs Rs 2,500 a month for 38 meals and the food is prepared by a professional chef provided by a third-party vendor. The CoHo team sets the basic menu, but it’s altered according to the preference of the residents. Though these meal plans are not available for those living in CoHo’s apartments, the company tries to link its apartment users with a chef from the same vendor that services its villas. Every few days, the CoHo team reaches out to residents through the app and asks them for their inputs and preferences. Based on the feedback, the menu is altered frequently to ensure the residents’ palate stays happy.

Everyone knows cricket is essential. So does CoHo.

Let’s now get to brass tacks: What does it cost you?

A villa accommodation where you share your room with another person costs between Rs 8,000 and Rs 15,000 a month, depending on the location. A shared room in a flat will cost between Rs 11,000 and Rs 15,000. These amounts do not include electricity bills and meal plans. A solo room in either format will set you back by Rs 17,000 to Rs 25,000. 

Take a 3D tour before deciding

You can even take a 3D tour of CoHo’s properties before taking a call. This facility, available only for its villa offerings in Gurgaon’s Shushant Lok at present, will shortly be made available for other offerings, too. It’s the concept of the villa that catches your eye. And, while the virtual walkthrough is convincing enough, it is advisable that you take a trip to the property and inspect the goods for yourself.

No, it’s not just about the technology. There are pool parties, a gym, open-air theatre and hookah too

It’s a lifestyle thing. “It’s like belonging to a club… Like having a membership,” explains Amber. When I dropped in by the villa after being crammed in an unusually crowded metro train (thank you, Ola and Uber), I saw what he meant. It is not dull, it sure is not drab. They have kept it open, modern and bright: Everything from the colours, furniture, to the motifs on the walls.  

Here CoHo's residents and their friends enjoy a party themed after the popular sitcom Friends.

The Shushant Lok villa is tricked out folks. They have a pool table and the gaming console you left behind at home; so yes, you can still kill the bad guys in Modern Warfare. These aren’t afterthoughts, mind you. CoHo is serious about “recreational activities” and all evidence suggests that the pool table is well used. You’re a fitness freak but you can't pump iron anymore courtesy the rigours of work and fending for yourself once you’re back “home”? They have a fully-equipped gym waiting for you too. And there are no extra charges for using it. 

Not near enough for you to want to live in what appears like a fancy hostel, but a hostel nonetheless? Get this, they have a gazebo. They have a gazebo which comes with a barbeque grill and hookahs, and it doubles up as an open-air theatre for when they conduct movie screenings at night for the residents. That’s where I sat while Uday and Amber filled me in.

Don’t get me wrong, the duo impressed upon me the fact that they are, at the end of the day, “businessmen who are out to make money”. And, they do claim that they, unlike many start-ups out there, are already making a profit courtesy of having worked out their margins. However, they really do want you to have a good time.

The community focus

Ashok, a resident at one of CoHo's villas, appreciates the community focus. "Meeting people has become a lot easier now. I have something to look forward to after I am done with work," he says. What does he want CoHo to do next? "Open up in more cities" so that he can live the CoHo life if he got transferred. He's sold on CoHo and doesn't mind the fact that he could have landed a PG at a lower price. "CoHo charges slightly more than others but that is fine given the amenities they provide," he explains.

Why CoHo might be a better pick over a regular PG? 

Jatan Bawa is a young professional at an early-stage start-up and he is a veteran of many years when it comes to living in PGs. "Coming to Delhi University from Nagpur, I have stayed in various PGs and rented apartments over the past six years," Bawa tells us right in the beginning, adding that CoHo only appears to be more expensive at first but the number of amenities and services it bundles in mitigate the higher cost. 

Bawa, like Ashok, appreciates the ease of meeting people which the community-based living model brings in. "I am sharing my living space with like-minded individuals," he says. However, what is that one thing, aside from the "clean, well furnished and beautiful aesthetics", that CoHo has over regular PGs? "They stand out because of their professional approach to addressing a resident's issues. That is something that is absent in your average PG," he explains. His fondest memory is playing Fifa during the "gaming night" event organised by the folks at CoHo. That was the first such CoHo event he had attended and he makes it a point to get in on all their gaming nights.

No, seriously, they like their extracurricular stuff. That’s CoHo’s real pitch: Living in a community and building memories with the folks you share your living space with. And, they take their pitch seriously. Cue the beer pong contests and intra-villa pool tournaments. CoHo regularly organises such events for its residents, the only catch is that apartment dwellers will have to present themselves at one of the villas to get in on the action. 

Speaking of action… Yes there are rules

No good sir, you will not be able to bring your lady friend back to your room at the villa, or vice versa. However, if you happen to be living in a CoHo apartment then you can bring over a friend for the night. Furthermore, they do allow you to bring guests to the common areas in the villa. CoHo does have rules for its villa rooms, albeit they don’t appear to be draconian about them like your everyday PG owner. Technically, you can’t drink or smoke inside the villa rooms either; although, you can smoke in the balconies or the gazebo. It is a shared living space after all. 

However, both Amber and Uday admit that monitoring what folks do inside their rooms is not feasible and privacy does matter. 
 

The sense I got is that the rules exist to tone things down instead of being red lines. Behave yourself, don’t bother your roommates and fellow residents, keep it sane and things should be kosher.