Mumbai based Rentomojo lets you rent furniture at affordable prices
While real estate portals like Housing, Commonfloor, Magicbricks etc help us rent flats and houses, there are very few startups that let us rent furniture and home decor at affordable prices. To fill this vacuum, here comes Mumbai-based Rentomojo.
Rentomojo is a marketplace that offers furniture, furnishings, appliances and other home verticals that house hunters can book at affordable rentals.
Parmeshwar, a Chembur-based professional working with the country’s largest public sector bank wanted a queen size bed for his grandmother for a few months. “While searching for it online, I came across Rentomojo. They not only delivered a new wrought iron bed to me but installed it as well for my grandmother,” he says.
The company lets users rent furniture and home furnishings for a minimum period of three months. “Renting makes sense for anyone and everyone who is looking for off the shelf solutions to furnish their house without spending much,” explains Geetansh Bamania, CEO and co-founder, Rentomojo. Currently, RentoMojo is operational only in Mumbai.
Genesis of the idea
“Nowadays, we have plenty of options to rent houses at the click of a button but none for renting furniture. Buying furniture requires unjustified spending and it comes with an extra baggage of ‘what to do' with the furniture when you relocate. As a result, we either end up living below par lifestyles in under-furnished houses or spend way beyond what is necessary,” says Geetansh.
Price point and quality are the two strong differentiators of Rentomojo. At present there are a couple of startups such as Furlenco and Memrito evangelizing furniture rental space. However, they are catering mostly to expats and B2B space (like office, events etc). “They are more of a catalogue based listing platforms with little emphasis on technology,” adds Geetansh.
A brainchild of IIT Chennai alumni Geetansh, Ajay Nain, Prashant Chanchal and KJ Venky; Rentomojo raised seed
capital from London-based investors last year. Geetansh is a serial entrepreneur and has worked with eCommerce majors such as Flipkart and Pepperfry while Ajay has had a stint at Himalaya Drug company and Daimler. Prashant earlier started KhaoIndia, a food delivery startup based out of Kolkata and Venky has led the technology division at GyanData.
How will Rentomojo find scale?
In a general scenario if you rent a furnished bachelor apartment (one room, toilet and kitchen) in Gurgaon, you have to shell out 12K per month while renting an unfurnished one- room apartment costs 8K.
However, if you rent furniture and home decor from Rentomojo it will cost Rs 1,500 per month. Going by this calculation you will end up saving close to 30K annually.
Bachelors and freelancers who move from one city to another for long projects are potential segments for Rentomojo. According to some industry estimates the furniture renting space is worth a 500 million market (only unfurnished apartments and houses) in India.
Besides Mumbai the company will roll out its operation in Pune in coming months and Delhi (NCR). It’s also in talk with venture capital firms to raise Series A.
In YourStory’s view RentoMojo has interesting business model and it can be scaled-up in quick time. Increasing demand of furnishing houses and flats will propel Rentomojo’s growth as it’s a cheaper option as compared to other alternatives.
Website: Rentomojo