Flatchat, the app for students and bachelors to find accommodation and flatmates, has raised $2.5 million from CommonFloor.com. The company will use the funds for hiring engineers, to scale up operations and expand to other cities. With this investment, CommonFloor has essentially increased its stake in Flat.to. CommonFloor had acquired a controlling stake in Flat.to for an undisclosed amount in cash and stock in April last year. The company’s co-founder and CEO Sumit Jain had said then that Flat.to would continue to function independently, with Flat.to co-founder and CEO Gaurav Munjal heading it. Subsequently, Flat.to launched its mobile app called Flatchat in October and shut down its website to go mobile only, adopting the Flatchat brand name. How it works Flatchat lets potential flatmates and owners connect to each other based on their location and requirement. The platform is broker free, as users connect directly with each other. As of now, the app helps find accommodations in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi-NCR, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. Note that users can signup and use the apps services only after logging in with their Facebook account. Apart from allowing users with similar requirements to chat with each other, Flatchat also claims to provide an assistant service, which will act as a one point contact for finding available places. On contacting the ‘assistant’, the team assigned will find places matching the user’s requirement and provide them with the available options. As of now Flatchat claims to have over 50,000 users including users on both its…
