ZEN Rooms Co-founders

Kiren Tanna, Co-founder of ZEN Rooms, has announced his resignation from the budget hotel booking startup after a stint of four and half years. He shared his exit in a Twitter post, stating the sentiment of the growth he has witnessed during his tenure.

“From just an idea, ZEN Rooms today is present in 4 countries, growing 4x yoy, best in class CSAT, and a team of more than 500 colleagues!” the statement reads.

Tanna also made remarks of the perfect timing of his decision, highlighting Korean travel group Yanolja’s acquisition earlier this year that made it ZEN Rooms’ current biggest shareholder.

Tanna added that the other co-founder Nathan Boublil will take over fully as CEO while Sean Lee from Yanolja will be Chief Strategy Officer. Lee has been in ZEN Rooms’s Board member since 2018.

Also Read: Korea’s Yanolja invests in ZEN Rooms; competition in budget-hotel space to intensify in SEA

The statement ends with Tanna stating his desire to take a break before resuming his work in the region’s startup community.

“I am advising a few founding teams and completing a few angel investments and looking forward to connecting with and supporting more great entrepreneurs. I also hope to sharpen my guitar and bahasa skill,” he said.

Before founding ZEN Rooms Asia alongside Boublil, Tanna had a stint as CEO in Rocket Internet APAC, and had held CEO position in Foodpanda.

In October 2019, ZEN Rooms received an undisclosed sum in investment from Yanolja, a travel group in South Korea. Hong Kong- and Korea-based Access Ventures has joined as a co-investor in this round.

Also Read: Our hyper-local approach sets us apart from competitors: Amit Saberwal of RedDoorz

Yanolja has acquired stakes from one of ZEN’s early investors and signed a strategic alliance with the Singapore-headquartered company. With this, ZEN’s early investor Asia Internet Holdings (a joint venture of Rocket Internet and Ooredoo Telecom), has exited while other early backers RedBadge Pacific and SBI Korea will remain as investors.

Yanolja, backed by Booking Holdings and GIC, was the lead strategic investor in the company’s US$15M funding round in 2018.

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Picture Credit: ZEN Rooms

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