Securing a £60,000 booking and organising a delivery of low-fat milk and cookies for a client are all in a day’s work for Gavin Pereira, founder and managing director of serviced apartment rental aggregator Check-in-London.com.

The sector, it turns out, is about much more than simply brokering deals over the phone. “This job involves a lot of emotional intelligence,” says Pereira. “It’s almost getting into the clients’ shoes.” It also involves a generous helping of business savvy and research skills, and at times a touch of guesswork.

“Often people will say, ‘Oh, I want to live there.’ But they don’t realise how expensive it really is. I was talking to a client’s secretary about a serviced apartment at 55 Park Lane, which is spectacularly expensive. I Googled the client and it turned out he works for a massive construction company. He’ll definitely be able to afford it.”

For Pereira, who established Check-in-London.com in 2009, the light-bulb moment came when he closed a corporate relocation deal for a senior managing director of RBS Singapore while working at Dolphin House Serviced Apartments, a booking worth a cool £240,000.

“When I closed that deal, I felt I could do it on my own – I felt confident,” he explains. “At that point, it dawned on me that it could be a business I could pursue. I thought, ‘I have something to bring to the table.’”

For the first two years, it was just Pereira manning the fort, but now the team has grown to six. In the early days, he worked from home on his laptop, but now the business has a home in an office block in Hammersmith. Initially, the business arranged serviced apartment stays in London only, but now Pereira is looking to expand into Paris, Dubai and New York.

With bookings that total more than £12 million in the past five years, business is booming for the small enterprise. But in the early days, as the sole employee of Check-in-London.com, Pereira faced his fair share of challenges.

“When you are new to something, you are a bit scared,” he says. “You have no other staff to call upon if you need help. One of the biggest challenges is getting recognised when you’re in the early stages of business and getting a team together.” He’s also had to struggle against startup stereotypes, which can set unfeasibly high expectations: “Everyone thinks that these [success] stories of Airbnb and Facebook are just normal, but they’re not.”

Laying the groundwork for the business also entailed a surprising amount of physical exertion. “In the first eight months, I spent entire days going all over London and documenting everything about it,” he recalls. “Like where the supermarkets and big offices are, the local restaurants to recommend, what the travelling time is between the apartment and local Tube stations.” Out of London’s 32 boroughs, Pereira’s now encyclopaedic local knowledge extends to a whopping 28.

Though his team has since grown significantly, Pereira maintains a hands-on approach. “As a small business owner, you do have to get involved.” He says business acumen comes from experience rather than natural know-how, and for this reason he takes the time to train his staff and help answer their queries. He’s even looking to take on an apprentice next year.

Despite his devotion to the business, Pereira has taken more of a back seat thanks to an important arrival last year. “Since March I’ve managed to switch off a little,” he concedes. “Now I’ve got a son.”