Nishant — Chief Product Officer (CPO), StayZ | Designing the Product That Makes Moving to a New City in India Feel Okay
Building India's first relocation platform means solving UX problems that have never been solved before. Nishant — StayZ's Chief Product Officer — is the person answering those questions every day.
How do you build an app that a 19-year-old opens for the first time on moving day — anxious, overloaded, phone in one hand and suitcase in the other — and immediately feels: okay, I've got this?
That's the question Nishant lives with. As Chief Product Officer (CPO) of StayZ, Nishant is responsible for every product decision that shapes how users experience the platform — from their very first search to their 6-month check-in with their Dedicated Manager.
The Product Challenge: Designing for India's Most Stressed Users
Most app UX is designed for calm, unhurried users sitting at a desk. StayZ's users are the opposite: they're making big decisions under time pressure, often in unfamiliar places, on low-end phones, with patchy internet. Getting the product right for that user is orders of magnitude harder than building for the average consumer app.
Nishant's product philosophy at StayZ:
- Zero friction for the critical path — finding a home, booking a viewing, talking to your manager. These flows must be flawless.
- Trust-forward design — every element that reinforces verification, compliance, and TrustScore must feel empowering, not surveillance-like
- Lifecycle thinking — the app doesn't end at move-in; the best product keeps users engaged through the full first year in a new city
- Speed above everything — video tours that load instantly, searches that respond in under a second, listings that are always current
The Numbers That Define Success
StayZ users spend an average of 11 minutes per session on the platform — 5x the industry average for property apps. That's not an accident. It's the result of a product that earns attention by being genuinely useful, not by deploying dark patterns or notification spam.
When users spend 11 minutes in your app, they're not killing time. They're trusting you with a major life decision. Nishant builds for that level of trust.
What's Coming: The Product Roadmap
Nishant's 6-month product priorities:
- StayZ native mobile app — a full iOS and Android experience purpose-built for on-the-go movers
- TrustScore user dashboard — making the TrustScore visible and actionable for users, not just landlords
- Community features — connecting movers in the same neighbourhood or from the same college, turning the app into a social layer for new cities
- Post-move lifecycle tools — local recommendations, maintenance request flows, and renewal management for the full tenancy period
The goal: an app that users don't just open to find a home, but open every week because it makes their life in a new city better.
🌐 www.stayz.tech — India's first relocation app