‍Overview

GoStops didn't plan to become India's largest hostel brand. The idea came from a trip to Europe in 2012, when co-founder Pankaj Parwanda found himself in a Bob Marley hostel, and within five minutes, strangers were sharing their stories across a barstool. His wife Pallavi made the call: someone should build this for India. That was the beginning of GoStops.

Now GoStops operates hostels across 30+ properties, serving travellers who are searching for connection, not just a bed. The business is operationally intensive by nature. Every property runs its own vendor relationships, maintenance contracts, housekeeping services, repair work, utility bills.

The Challenge

Bills arrived from everywhere

Every bill from across 30 properties made its way to the finance team over email or Google Drive. Some arrived couriered  paper documents that someone at HQ had to physically open, read, and enter. The process of getting a bill from a property into the books was a multi-step, multi-person task that the finance team had no system for. It was, in Nikhil's words, "a task to perform."

Manual Reconciliation

The reconciliation that followed was the most time-consuming part. At every book-closing cycle, the team worked through a backlog of entries that needed to be matched, verified, and accounted for. The process was slow not because the team was underperforming, but because the inputs were scattered and the tools weren't built for this volume.

Payment authorisation was a nightly interruption

Pankaj is the payment authoriser, so whenever the payments team submitted transactions  often at nine o'clock at night  he had to open his laptop, open the bank app on a separate phone, and navigate a rotating OTP that expired every 60 seconds. The race between remembering the password and the phone screen dimming was a nightly occurrence.

"Usually I would just get very irritated. The payments team will just input payments at 9 o'clock in the night and that will mean me opening my laptop, another phone, opening the bank app, and that would sort of rotate a password every 60 secs... I think it was enough stress." ~ Pankaj Parwanda, Co-Founder, goSTOPs

The Solution

Centralised bill ingestion

With Mysa, every invoice  regardless of which property it originated from, and regardless of whether it arrived over email or was uploaded directly,. flows into a single system. The finance team no longer receives bills piecemeal from 30 inboxes. Mysa picks up the invoice, fills all the data, and holds it at the review point. Nikhil's team goes into one place, verifies the details, and moves it forward to payment or accounting.

"Mysa automatically picks up the invoice from email, fill all the data. So I just go and verify the details and then proceed for payment or for accounting."  Nikhil Aggarwal, AVP Finance, GoStops

Payment Authorization from Mobile

Pankaj now authorises payments easily from the Mysa mobile app. He can now select 100 payments and authorise, with full bill context.

"Now if they just input, even while driving actually at a red light, I'm able to select 100 payments and just approve."  Pankaj Parwanda, Co-Founder, goSTOPs

The payments team noticed immediately. goSTOPs runs a lean authorisation structure, and the friction that used to sit between a submitted payment and an authorised one is gone.

Spend analytics by room

Because every payment in Mysa is tagged with the relevant property, room number, and cost centre at the point of entry, GoStops now has enough granularity to catch the pattern that was previously invisible. 

"Today because it's being inputted with the room number, there is enough analytics available, it clearly throws out that there is an AC in room 201 that is undergoing repeated issues, and that sort of helps us get such minute issues highlighted."  Pankaj Parwanda, Co-Founder, GoStops

See how Mysa's Reports and Insights surface spend data by cost centre in real time.

Faster Book Closing

The reconciliation task that used to consume book-closing cycles is now handled by the platform. Mysa's Zoho integration means payment entries are automatically passed through and matched  no manual portal entries, no data entry tasks for the finance team to complete before they can start closing. What used to take two to three additional working days just for reconciliation has been reclaimed.

"We saw book closing time reduce by 2-3 working days just on account of reconciliation, so I have 3 hours quality time of my team daily."  Nikhil Aggarwal, AVP Finance, GoStops

For Nikhil's team of two to three people who were previously spending a large part of their day on transactional reconciliation work, those hours now go toward analysis and decision support. The clerical layer has come down. The finance team's output has gone up.

See how Mysa's Audit Trails make every bill, approval, and payment traceable without manual reconstruction.

Seamless Accounting Sync

One of the features Nikhil highlights is the Zoho integration. Vendors created in Mysa's accounting module are automatically created in Zoho. Payment entries pass through Mysa into the books. The reconciliation that used to be a month-end scramble now happens as a byproduct of how payments are processed.

"One of the best parts about Mysa is the seamless integration with Zoho. My vendors gett created automatically in Zoho, if I create in Mysa. accounting, it's seamless, payment entry is also getting passed."  Nikhil Aggarwal, AVP Finance, GoStops

Support that is available when the business needs it

GoStops describes Mysa's support as a differentiator in how they chose and stayed with the platform. The entire team is on a WhatsApp group. When a payment issue comes up  even one involving 100 payments going through with one flagged  Pankaj doesn't write a support ticket and wait two days for a response. Someone responds, and if needed, gets on a call.

"There's someone to respond to even in the middle of the night."  Pankaj Parwanda, Co-Founder, goSTOPs

Looking Forward

Pankaj has discussed processing payments through virtual cards with the product team. The potential he sees in Mysa is as a complete AP tool: that handles the procurement process from PO through to payment, while keeping inventory visibility intact. For a multi-property hospitality business where procurement and maintenance are constant, that kind of end-to-end capability is the next layer GoStops wants to build on.