PNN
New Delhi [India], May 28: There's a question that every serious traveller in India eventually asks: where do you actually stay when hotels start to feel impersonal, and Airbnb listings feel like a gamble?
For a growing number of discerning families, corporate groups, and celebrations-in-themaking, the answer has increasingly become the same -- Stay Ananta.
Founded in 2017 by Mr. Darshan Hiranandani and Mrs. Smita Asrani, and managed dayto-day by Mrs. Bharti J, Stay Ananta didn't enter the luxury villa rental market with a splashy launch or a venture-capital war chest. It started, like most things that endure, with a conviction: that private villa stays in India could match the best in the world, if someone was willing to be obsessive about the details.
Nearly a decade later, the numbers tell one story -- 600+ handpicked luxury villas, 15+ destinations, 2.7 lakh guests served, a 4.8-star rating that has held steady through scale. But the real story is in what those numbers don't capture.
The Philosophy Behind the Portfolio
Most villa rental companies in India operate on volume. List everything. Approve fast. Let the reviews sort it out.
Stay Ananta took the opposite approach. Their vetting process is famously rigorous -- fewer than 1 in 10 properties that apply actually make it into the collection. Every villa is personally inspected. Linen quality, water pressure, kitchen equipment, the view from the master bedroom at sunrise -- nothing is taken on trust.
The result is a portfolio that feels intentional rather than inflated. Whether it's a threebedroom cottage tucked into the Sahyadri hills or a sprawling twelve-bedroom estate overlooking paddy fields in South Goa, each property meets a standard that most competitors simply don't enforce.
The brand further organises its collection into distinct tiers -- Stay Ananta Luxe Collection,
Ananta Noir, Stay Ananta Signature Collection, Ananta Élite, and Stay Ananta Most Desired Collection -- each representing a clearly defined level of luxury, service, and experience. It's a system that gives guests a vocabulary for what they're booking, and a promise they can hold the brand to.
Where Stay Ananta Takes You
Stay Ananta's footprint now spans the full breadth of India's leisure travel map. Here's the complete picture:
Maharashtra -- Lonavala, Alibaug, Karjat, Kamshet, Pawna, Mahabaleshwar, Nashik, Igatpuri
Goa -- North Goa, South Goa
Rajasthan -- Jaipur, Udaipur
Himachal Pradesh -- Manali, Kasauli, Shimla
Uttarakhand -- Mussoorie, Rishikesh, Jim Corbett
Karnataka -- Coorg, Chikmagalur
Kerala -- Munnar, Wayanad
But a list of destinations is just geography. What makes Stay Ananta's approach different is how deeply embedded the brand is in each location. Every destination has its own locally hired team of caretakers, chefs, and hospitality staff -- people who know the area, understand the seasonal rhythms, and can recommend the waterfall that isn't on Google Maps.
Five Destinations That Define the Stay Ananta Experience
While the full portfolio spans coasts, mountains, and heritage cities, five destinations capture the essence of what Stay Ananta does best.
Lonavala: The Western Ghats, Without the Chaos
Lonavala has always been Mumbai and Pune's go-to weekend escape. But anyone who's driven through the main strip on a Saturday afternoon knows the problem -- it's become crowded, commercial, and increasingly indistinguishable from the city you left behind.
Stay Ananta's Lonavala collection exists in a different world entirely. Private villas set into the hillside with infinity pools that seem to dissolve into the valley below. Properties where the only sound at 7 a.m. is birdsong and the distant hum of a waterfall. The brand's strongest concentration of villas is here, and it shows -- from compact couples' retreats to sprawling family estates with theatre rooms and outdoor barbecue setups, the range is unmatched.
For travellers from Mumbai (roughly two hours by expressway) and Pune (just over an hour), Lonavala remains the most accessible luxury escape in western India. Stay Ananta has simply raised the bar on what that escape looks like.
Karjat: The Quieter Alternative That's Having Its Moment
If Lonavala is the popular kid, Karjat is the interesting one. Less developed, more raw, and surrounded by river valleys and dense forest rather than tourist infrastructure, Karjat has attracted a different kind of villa -- larger properties with serious land, often with their own farm-to-table gardens, riverside access, and a sense of genuine seclusion.
Stay Ananta's Karjat portfolio leans into this. These aren't villas that try to replicate a hotel experience. They're homes that happen to come with private chefs, sunset-facing decks, and the kind of silence that makes you realise how loud your everyday life has become. Weekend corporate offsites have become a particular strength here -- the setting lends itself to the kind of unhurried thinking that conference rooms never allow.
At roughly 90 minutes from Mumbai, Karjat offers everything Lonavala does, minus the traffic and the tourist traps.
North Goa: Beyond the Beach Shack
Goa doesn't need an introduction. But the Goa that Stay Ananta operates in might.
Forget the beach shack and the crowded Calangute strip. Stay Ananta's North Goa collection is centred in the quieter, more architecturally interesting pockets -- Assagao, Siolim, Anjuna's back lanes, and the increasingly sought-after Vagator plateau. These are Portuguese-influenced villas with laterite walls and tropical courtyards, contemporary homes designed by some of Goa's best architects, and heritage properties that have been sensitively restored for modern living.
The appeal is different from a Maharashtra hill station. In North Goa, the villa is the destination. Guests aren't driving to viewpoints -- they're cooking Goan prawn curry with the in-house chef, reading by the pool through an afternoon thunderstorm, and walking to a neighbourhood bar that only locals know about.
For travellers from Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, Goa remains the definitive long-weekend luxury destination in India. Stay Ananta's presence there reflects the shift in how people experience the state -- less party, more private.
Igatpuri: The Wellness Corridor
Igatpuri has always had something that other hill stations near Mumbai lacked -- a spiritual dimension. Home to the Vipassana International Academy and surrounded by the Tringalwadi and Bhatsa dam landscapes, the area attracts a different kind of traveller. One who wants stillness, not stimulation.
Stay Ananta's Igatpuri villas lean into this character. Expect properties surrounded by working farms, morning views of the Kalsubai range (Maharashtra's highest peak), and an absence of the nightlife-and-restaurant culture that defines Lonavala or Alibaug. The brand has positioned Igatpuri as its wellness and retreat destination -- a place where small groups come for yoga weekends, digital detoxes, and celebrations that prioritise togetherness over spectacle.
At just under two hours from Mumbai via the Kasara ghat, Igatpuri is also one of the most scenic drives in western India -- a fact that Stay Ananta guests discover long before they arrive at the property.
Manali: The Himalayan Chapter
When Stay Ananta expanded beyond Maharashtra and Goa, the choice of Manali signalled a clear ambition -- to be a truly national brand rather than a regional one.
Manali is India's original mountain escape, and the luxury villa market here has evolved rapidly in recent years. Stay Ananta's Himalayan collection includes traditional Himachali cottages with wooden balconies overlooking the Beas river, as well as contemporary chalets with floor-to-ceiling glass, heated floors, and the kind of mountain views that stop conversations mid-sentence.
What distinguishes these properties from the area's crowded hotel strip along Mall Road is precisely what Stay Ananta does best -- privacy, space, and the assurance that someone has personally checked whether the hot water works at 6 a.m. in January. For families from Delhi and Chandigarh, and increasingly from Mumbai and Bengaluru (Kullu-Manali airport has expanded connectivity significantly), a Stay Ananta villa in Manali is a Himalayan experience without the Himalayan compromises.
What the Awards Say -- And What They Don't
Recognition from the industry has followed the growth. Stay Ananta has been named Brand of the Year by MakeMyTrip and recognised as Favourite Villa Rentals by Conde Nast Traveller -- two of the most respected names in Indian travel and global luxury publishing, respectively.
But awards, as any honest hotelier will tell you, capture a moment. What sustains a hospitality brand is repetition -- the same family booking for the fourth Diwali in a row, the same corporate team returning to the same Karjat villa every quarter, the friend-of-a-friend recommendation that fills weekends eighteen months in advance.
Stay Ananta's 4.8-star guest rating, maintained across more than 2.7 lakh guests, speaks to this consistency. It's the kind of number that's easy to achieve with ten properties and hard to maintain with six hundred.
The People Behind the Brand
Behind the operational machinery is a leadership trio with complementary strengths.
Mr. Darshan Hiranandani, co-founder, brought the original vision -- the conviction that India's luxury villa market was ready for a brand that could deliver five-star consistency in a private-home setting. His background in business gave Stay Ananta the strategic discipline that many hospitality startups lack.
Mrs. Smita Asrani, co-founder, brought the aesthetic and experiential sensibility -- an understanding that luxury in a villa context isn't about marble lobbies and uniformed doormen, but about the quality of the towels, the playlist on the Bluetooth speaker, and whether the pool is the right temperature when you wake up.
Mrs. Bharti J, who manages the day-to-day operations, has been the architect of Stay Ananta's expansion -- building the destination-level teams, establishing the vetting protocols, and maintaining quality standards across a portfolio that now spans seven Indian states.
It's a leadership structure that avoids the single-founder bottleneck. The brand feels like it has multiple sensibilities running through it -- strategic, aesthetic, and operational -- and that shows in the product.
What Comes Next
Stay Ananta isn't slowing down. The brand's expansion into Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, and Kerala suggests a roadmap that follows India's evolving travel patterns -- the shift towards longer stays, remote-work-friendly destinations, and experience-led travel rather than sightseeing-led travel.
The villa rental category in India is maturing fast. Travellers who once defaulted to five-star hotels are discovering that a well-managed private villa offers something hotels fundamentally cannot -- the feeling of being home, in a place that isn't home, with someone else taking care of everything.
Stay Ananta understood this earlier than most. And they built for it -- not with shortcuts, but with the kind of patient, property-by-property rigour that turns a collection of homes into a brand people trust.
For anyone planning a luxury villa getaway in India -- whether it's a monsoon weekend in Lonavala, a family reunion in Goa, or a winter escape to Manali -- the question isn't whether to consider Stay Ananta. It's which property to choose from a collection that now stretches across the best addresses in the country.
Stay Ananta operates 600+ luxury villas across 15+ destinations in India. For bookings and enquiries, visit stayananta.com .
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