Stayo

The name came first

The company was renamed and rebranded before there was a product to put the name on. Name, mark, palette and a written set of rules, so that everything built afterwards had something to be consistent with.

That order matters more than it sounds. A brand designed after the software is a coat of paint. Designed before it, it decides what the software looks like.

What we built

The side a guest sees: searching, a property page, booking, paying, and what happens after a booking, including changing one and cancelling one.

The side the company sees: the console their managers run the homes from. Properties and units, calendars and availability, bookings, expenses, documents, dashboards, and who is allowed to see what.

The backend both of those run on, the channel manager integration that keeps every listing in step, and iOS and Android apps in the same design system.

Everything is built

The guest site, the operations console and the backend are built. So are the channel manager integration and the iOS and Android apps.

All of it shares one API and one design system, so a change to a home, a rate or a booking shows up everywhere at once.

Role

Design & Engineering

Client

MyHomeStayz

Platform

Web & mobile

Category

Hospitality, short stays

Stack

Next.js, Node, Postgres, Expo

Status

Built: web, console, channel manager, mobile apps

Stayo is a curated homestay brand in Hyderabad. Every property is hand-picked and prepared the night before a guest arrives: fresh linens, stocked kitchen, lamp on, a note from the team. One team runs it end to end. It is anti-marketplace by design, one brand rather than a directory of strangers.

MyHomeStayz came to us with a working business and a name they had outgrown. The operation was good; the brand was holding it back. They wanted a new identity and the product to carry it, built together. We rebranded the company to Stayo and built the platform underneath it: the guest-facing web app, the operations tooling that runs the homes, the backend that ties it together, the channel manager integration and the iOS and Android apps.

“

Pivot & Anchor don't just build what you ask for. They tell you when what you're asking for won't hold up as you grow. They took us off spreadsheets and onto a system my team actually operates on, they deliver ahead of schedule, they work directly with our other vendors, and they treat our operations as their problem to solve.

The product

01 · Book direct

105 homes, booked on Stayo's own site

Guests search the whole portfolio and book it on Stayo's own site. A stay sold here is Stayo's customer, with no marketplace taking a cut.

02 · The price, up front

The price they see is the price they pay

The reserve panel totals the nightly rate, cleaning and taxes as the guest picks dates. Nothing new appears at checkout.

03 · Run the day

The day's work on one screen

Arrivals, departures, rooms to turn over and guests still missing ID, each with the next action beside it. Managers start the day knowing what to do, not asking around.

04 · One calendar

Every channel on one calendar

All 105 homes across 18 properties on one grid. Bookings from Airbnb and Booking.com arrive through the channel manager, so a night sold anywhere closes everywhere.

05 · Know the numbers

Occupancy and revenue, against last month

Occupancy, average rate and revenue per available night, each compared with the period before. The owners see how the business is doing without building a spreadsheet.

Stayo is one product across three codebases on a shared API.

The web app is Next.js on the App Router, server-rendered so availability and pricing are always live. Maps are Google, payments are Razorpay, and sign-in is passwordless. The visual shift was full too: a new wordmark in DM Sans, the palette pulled from the homes, the copy voice rewritten. The legacy stack underneath kept its names on purpose so the business never stopped running.

The backend is Node and Express on PostgreSQL with Prisma, with Redis for rate-limiting and locks. The piece everything hangs off is availability. Every booking starts as a ten-minute hold, and a single query checks it against confirmed bookings, other live holds, and blocked dates, so the same night can't be sold twice. A job releases expired holds every minute to free the slot again.

Payments run through Razorpay, with Indian GST split into CGST, SGST, and IGST by the property's location, a cancellation policy snapshotted onto each booking, and refunds verified against the live Razorpay API before they post. Sign-in is multi-channel: magic link, phone OTP, Google, or Apple, with Redis-backed lockout against brute force.

Access is role-based across three tiers, guest, property manager, and super-admin, where a manager only ever sees their own homes. Eight scheduled jobs do the quiet work: hold release, booking and checkout reminders, review requests, a daily manager summary with a PDF invoice, and housekeeping. Email runs on AWS SES, files on S3 behind a CDN, OTPs on MSG91, and push on Firebase.