With the growing number of people that are shifting to cities, there is an increasing need for home appliances and furnishings. However, most of them do not permanently stay in one place and might have to change home every couple of years. In such cases, the whole shifting procedure becomes a messy task. It is not easy to buy and sell these appliances every time you move to a different place. Taking them with you might not feel so convenient either. So what do you do in such cases? Rentomojo has come up with a creative solution for this. Now you can own all the furniture you want without buying it. Wonder how that works? Read on!
RentoMojo (1) is an online rental service that provides furniture and home accessories at an affordable price. This enables the users to effortlessly let go of furniture that is temporarily used. You can also experiment with different kinds of style without putting a hole in your pocket. Even high-class luxurious designs can now be brought home at affordable prices. RentoMojo was established in November 2014 by Geetansh Bamania and Ajay Nain. As of now, RentoMojo works in many prominent cities in India including Delhi, Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Chennai, etc.
With more people moving from town to towns, the services of RentoMojo has become more popular and reliable. You don’t have to search through multitudes of stores to find the appliances you need. Moreover, you don’t have to live with your decision with the help of these short term commitments. The various categories available for rental on RentoMojo are furniture, home appliances, kitchen utilities, bikes, etc. They also offer packages ranging from 999 rupees to 7999 rupees. They even sell the simplest of items like cloth dryers and racks at very low prices. RentoMojo has around one lakh subscribers who are utilizing their services. Most of their users are young adults aged between 24 to 35 who frequently shift homes as a part of their career.
The birth of RentoMojo
The founders of RentoMojo, Geetansh Bamania, and Ajay Nain are both graduates from IIT Chennai. Geetansh had previously worked for market giants like Flipkart and Pepperfry. Ajay Nain also had an incredible experience in this field by working at Himalayas Healthcare and Daimler- Mercedez Benz. The idea for RentoMojo was born when they realized that many people in our country make unwanted investments in appliances that are going to be of short term use. Geetansh and Ajay saw that a business that could provide such devices for rent would have a broad demand all over the country. This technique did not require them to possess any products of their own.
RentoMojo would enter into a collaboration with sellers who were interested in earning an income through rental. They had a clear idea of how they were going to carry out this strategy. RentoMojo would be more like a marketplace where rentals could be carried out. The sellers would be given a cut from the rental cost. At the end of the day, RentoMojo provided an equally profitable plan for both the buyers and sellers. It is this asset-light model that attracted the likes of investors like IDG Ventures India. The founders were able to kick start the sales as they soon received seed funding from a few London-based investors. Within a year of business, RentoMojo had over 2000 active users on the platform.
The shortcomings and solutions
The products are rented out for a duration of eight months. RentoMojo informs the customer about the installment toward the start of the month. In a perfect circumstance, the client goes to the entrance, sees the payments due, and makes an installment towards it. However, that is not always carried out regularly. In the hustle of everyday activities, it is very feasible for a client to overlook an installment. Furthermore, the client winds up paying more towards late installment charges which gives them a poor client experience.
Out of their lifetime client base, 40% are secured with Rentomojo for a range of 2 years which leaves a good amount of clients in the need of making regular installments. Also, more clients participate as the organization develops and extends. The business expects clients to hold returning to the entrance, login to their dashboard, and make the installments. But putting up with the lagging installments from their clients has become a method of holding the clients for Rentomojo.
The monthly fee structure often turned out to be trouble for the customers. They either forgot about it or found it challenging to go through with the procedure. To solve this problem, RentoMojo came up with a subscription plan which could save the customers from monthly payments. Using Razorpay subscriptions, the customers can take care of the expense once, and they have nothing more to worry about. Most of the users of Rentomojo now make use of this one-time subscription. This also allowed the company to have a proper idea about the payments. They are more aware of the monthly installments, card failure, etc. RentoMojo now has better management of the cash flow and does not have to waste unnecessary effort on follow-ups of failed payments.
Funding and investments
RentoMojo conducted a pre-series A round of funding in 2015 which raised an amount of two million dollars. It was led by Accel Partners and IDG Ventures India. This was more of a partnership because Venkatesh Peddi from IDG Ventures India and Prashanth Prakash from Accel Partners enrolled in the board of directors at RentoMojo. Using this investment the company was and to expand its products to more cities in India.
In 2016, a Series A round of funding was led by IDG Ventures and Accel Partners in which they raised five million dollars. They used this investment to improve the quality of the products and build better technology for the website. The company operated a series B funding in 2017, and they were able to raise ten million dollars. This series saw investment from Bain Capital Ventures and Renaud Laplanche along with the existing investors.
