Online Rental Platform Rentezee Looks to Raise First Round of Funding
The rental market stands at $15Bn and peer-to-peer rental market at $9Bn, with a CAGR of 12%. There are over 400 million youngsters in the country. Smart phone access has grown to over 500 million. By 2021, India will have the largest population of millennials in the world. The rental market is at the cusp of explosion and Rentezee aims to spearhead the rental revolution.
Rentezee is an online community that enables Peer-to-Peer renting. Any individual, with their Facebook/Linkedin account and Aadhar ID verified, can rent out high quality idle assets to people who need them and start earning money as rent.
The seeders, or the ones renting out, decide the security amount and the rent they want to charge from the peers, or the ones taking on rent.
“We take care of the quality check of the products and requisite logistics. We also handle all the payments – security and rent – which is then transferred to our users via our secure portals. Thus, we solve the problem of fraudulent cash transactions from unknown people,” said Akshit Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Rentezee.
In an interaction with BWDisrupt, Akshit Kumar, Co-Founder & CEO, Rentezee spoke about his venture.
About Inception
We launched on April 1, 2017 as an online rental platform. We partnered with offline shops and rented out products to customers with the help of these vendors. We soon realized that this O2O model we started out with was not scalable; we did not want to be dependent on third parties for product quality and after-sales customer experience.
So, we created an asset light Peer-to-Peer solution that is Rentezee today.
Special Key Features
We have created an asset-light renting ecosystem with a commission based business model. We do not own any of the products on our platform, rather we focus on completing a 360-degree renting cycle using idle assets in every home in the neighborhood.
What we do: Rentezee leverages latest technology (like blockchain) and product UI/UX (Social Media Interface) to solve problems in the renting ecosystem.
What we are not: A furniture or electronics rental shop with a website and app.
Differentiation Factors
Business Model:
We are a P2P marketplace, as compared to inventory based or O2O aggregator model. This model affords us the freedom to scale exponentially.
UI-UX:
Instagram like UI gives renting a friendly and a familiar approach. This makes target customer education and acquisition that much faster.
Target Customer Market:
Young millennials who wish to earn quick money and make smart investments – The Snapchat Generation
Customer Delight:
We complete the 360-degree renting process with on-demand logistics and secure online payments.
Open Community:
One touch linking of social media accounts and Govt. UIDs to increase accountability and keep the platform transparent.
Funding & Monetization
We are actively looking to raise our first round of investment to scale up. We have talked to multiple VCs and HNIs and are in advanced round of talks with three investors regarding the same.
Our monetization model is simple – we only charge a basic amount on the services we offer, that makes us operationally profitable in every transaction.
From our Seeders, we charge 2% of the transaction amount as Service fee.
From Peers, we charge 10% of the transaction amount as Convenience Fee.
Minimal delivery charges applicable as per pickup-delivery distance between seeder and peer
Challenges Faced
Renting, as a market, is still at a nascent stage. Even today, when a user thinks of using a product, buying it from an online store or a physical shop is the first thought.
Renting is mostly associated with apartments and other real estate. Consumers are just beginning to understand that renting is a very logical choice for other products as well – Electronics, Furniture, Designer Apparel, Books and more.
The greatest challenge for any early stage market is customer education. As a business, renting has been validated for decades. But the market is fragmented and plagued with loopholes.
In recent years, many startups are trying to tackle these problems in the renting market from different angles. Rentezee is solving these problems using Peer-to-Peer renting.
In the US, shared economy startups like Uber and AirBnB have experienced explosive growth. In India, the market is still maturing, but if there is one place where shared economy will work, it’s a country with 1.2 billion people.
We are informing users about how renting is the smart choice, especially with the busy nomadic lives we all live and instant gratification we all crave.
Traction Details
Currently, we have 100+ products rented out on our platform. We have a steady growth rate of ~200% M-o-M. We are at a healthy 3:1 Provider to Customer Ratio.
We give special attention to three KEY METRICS – Liquidity, Provider-to-Customer Ratio and Repeat Purchase Ratio.
Expansion Plans
We have already launched our B2B arm; in the next 6 months, we will be exploring corporate alliances, especially with startups and SMEs, who are on the lookout to avoid blocking their capital on setup costs. Rentezee provides curated rental solutions for them.
Post our first round of funding next quarter, we will launch in a new city by mid-2018.
We are doubling down on digital advertising and user incentives to build our Seeder Count – the supply side of our marketplace.
By leveraging digital economy, latest fintech solutions and blockchain technology, we aim to make renting a 3-click process and grow 100X in GMRV by next year end.
Marketing Plans
Our marketing strategy is a combination of paid advertising and growth hacks.
- Rent based Incentive Model for Seeders
- Targeted Social Media Ads – we have seen a rise in people reaching out to us over Facebook and Instagram
- Leverage Selling Platforms - Olx and Quikr
- Campus Ambassador Programs – to stay strongly connected with the smart millennials in college campuses.
