A Chartered Accountant by training and a corporate banker by profession, Tejas Parulekar is the Founder of SaffronStays – Where Families Bond, a hospitality collective.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Tejas is a commerce graduate from R.A. Podar College of Commerce and Economics and later qualified as a Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Tejas began her professional journey by working at Ernst & Young, and later moved to corporate banking at ICICI Bank and then to HSBC.
During a family trip to Europe, Tejas and her husband/ Founder of SaffronStays, Mr. Devendra Parulekar noticed the dearth of curated and quality homestay options in the country. This inspired the couple to ideate a platform that offered the comfort of a home on a holiday. Thus, SaffronStays was born with the motive of providing an indulging travel experience. The platform, as it stands today, is the result of her tireless endeavors to fulfill the dream of transforming the hospitality industry in India.
In her spare time, Tejas likes to swim, play basketball and trek in the monsoons in the Sahyadris. She also enjoys watching films. She’s been training in the classical dance form of Kathak.
Tejas would like to invest more in product development to enhance the holiday experience. At SaffronStays, she handles Operations and Home acquisition. The best part of her job is that she gets to visit stunning homes created with passion by their proud owners, listen to stories of their trials and tribulations in making their dreams into reality. She is thankful to them for sharing their creations with SaffronStays’ discerning guests.
(Winner: CNBC Young Turks Award in 2018, Leadership award by SheThePeople in its Digital Women Entrepreneurs Award in 2017
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About SaffronStays
Headquartered in Mumbai, SaffronStays is India’s foremost and exclusive collection of fully staffed and serviced private vacation homes at drive-to destinations from major urban cities. A preferred network of private vacation villas and estates, it is where families bond. Seven years old now, it is a trusted network of story-rich private vacation homes, which has grown from being a homegrown hospitality collective to one that’s making waves in the luxury segment.
Funded by Sixth Sense Ventures, this 7-year-old trusted network of story-rich private vacation homes across the country, provides the certainty and consistency for weekend getaways, family holidays, and celebrations with colleagues, friends, and loved ones. They stand for honest hospitality, warm and thoughtful service and authentic, home-cooked meals in the luxury of private estates. Home management-cum-vacation rentals like SaffronStays help bridge the gap between homeowners and guests looking at an experiential stay and caters to both their needs.
Post-COVID, private vacation homes were seen in a new light. Since people preferred not sharing spaces with outsiders, they opted for safe and sanitised villas at drive-to distances from the city. People refrain from staying at a hotel anymore since they have to share common spaces with strangers, one is limited to their rooms and there’s no access to amenities like pool, gymnasium, and so on. Owing to this change in the customer’s behaviour, a private villa with a pool, scenic views, home-fresh meals, and a caretaking staff that pampers guests were sought after. Keeping with this, workations and long stays at private villas became a buzzword.
Alongside this, SaffronStays also reinvented their Corporate vertical to suit the work-from-home trend and have started an end-to-end Celebrations vertical. Given how intimate celebrations have been and will be for a while, a private villa is not a startling suggestion anymore. With a capacity of 100 + visitors for a day event, a SaffronStays home is perfectly poised for a day event that sees 50 to 175 people for a gathering/celebration.
With the intent of redefining the term ‘luxury’, it offers guests the warmth that’s amiss at a fancy hotel and the feeling of owning an exclusive vacation home in picturesque locales. The experience of staying at a private villa is much different than one at a hotel.
Over the last two years, they have made optimum use of technology to expand their footprint and make the stakeholders’ experience more seamless. Using the data at hand, they constantly monitor and improve their product and offerings. For instance, in a survey, they found that vacationers were looking for pools/some sort of waterbody when they take some time off. They used this insight to ensure that all their new homes or existing homes either had a pool or were close to a lake, river or pond.
With a network of 200 private vacation homes across India, SaffronStays aims to change the way people vacation. All homes are carefully selected based on a 100-point stringent checklist and once onboarded, are transformed to deliver a consistent experience in line with our philosophy.
For additional information, please visit www.saffronstays.com