Stayzilla appoints Chandramouli Gopalakrishnan as vice president of products

Online budget accommodation company Stayzilla has appointed Chandramouli Gopalakrishnan, former director of products at Goibibo, as vice president of products, soon after it named former Twitter director Pankaj Gupta as chief product officer.
The company is looking to strengthen its position in the home-stay business after it raised $13.5 million from existing investors. “The ratio of senior managers to young talent in the team is skewed. We are looking to correct that and will also be on boarding a head of marketing soon,” said Yogendra Vasupal, chief executive of Inasra Tech, which owns Stayzilla.
Previously headquartered in Chennai, the company recently consolidated its product and engineering teams in Bengaluru. The appointments come at a time when the share of alternate stay segment on the online platform has grown to 45% from 6% in September last year.
“We take time to verify properties. About 70% of our properties in the home stay segment are sourced at town halls we conduct periodically, which go live in three days, while individual posts take eight days to go live,” said Vasupal.
Home stay policies in different states need to be aligned for ease of operations, he said. The company is planning to launch new products for home stay including a chat-based platform and additional features for making it more cost efficient.