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Rentomojo.com: Story of an ultimate plug-n-play kit for start-ups

By Prashant Chanchal on 25 Comments / 8873 views

Hello RHs,

I am Prashant, your fellow Rodinhooder for over 3 years now. Before I begin this post, let me offer my prayers to the Gods of this community: #rodinhood for creating this beautiful community, #motherRH for caressing this community with such love and care and none other than our very own #wikiRH (Darshan) – the guru, the know-it-all gawd! If I were to throw a punch line here, I’d say God exists; he is a Rodinhooder, lives in Bhayendar and uses his super-powers to go beyond imaginable limits in order to help unknown people! Thanks Darshan!

When I started my first company called khaoIndia 4 years ago; one of the big hindrances we faced was blocking a major chunk of our valuable cash in setting up and maintaining office assets and inventories to even get going. We first tried renting furniture from local vendors who took us on a poor quality-bad service ride topped up with the hassles of offline payments. Eventually we ended up buying things.

Back then we didn’t have shared workspaces and the few that existed came at a hefty cost per seat! Around the same time, my friends from IIT Madras Geetansh (ex-flipkart, ex-pepperfry, click2skill, hopemonkey), Ajay (ex-Daimler, ex-Himalaya) and Venkatesh (ex-Gyandata) too were facing similar issues at their start ups & rented flats.

Few discussions followed and we had found our Eureka moment. We sat over a coffee and said – Why not!

And hence was born Rentomojo – an online marketplace for renting premium quality affordable furniture and appliances. The initial problem statement was clear – give enterprising people; the start-up dudes some life, some air to breathe. But gradually when we gave it deeper thought, the spectrum appeared to be much broader than what we imagined. As previous employees ourselves, we had seen ourselves come across the hassles of unplanned job switches, sudden transfers and with that came the baggage of shifting truckload of sh*t, renting a new place, buying unnecessary piles of furniture and appliances and going for those moving out sales when the time to move again was there!

So with all that on mind, we launched Rentomojo.com about 4 months back with a strong focus on product quality, freshness and customer service. We realized local vendors, second hand players were doing plain unjust with customers charging big bucks on rental for things below acceptable quality standards. We were even shocked to get shipping quotes as high as 3000/- bucks. This needs to stop and this is where we strive to disrupt the current market dynamics. Currently we’re promising delivery & pick-up across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai at just 900/- and we want to go more aggressive with that. God willing, we’ll go delivering free of cost someday!

The idea behind this post is to seek your valuable feedback and reasoning on it all. Be it sourcing or some innovative promotional ideas – pl share anything you feel. that will add value to our functioning and will take us a long way (frankly speaking, since I’m handling marketing & promotions at Rentomojo, so ideas toward that end would be like orgasm for me).

Besides, we’d love to help pack your office with all those essential furniture & appliances on affordable rentals. I believe Start ups are like kids, they got that tiny pocket that needs to be handled carefully, and this is where renting makes sense. Simply order the stuff you need and bang you’re good to go in a few days’ time without really blocking your big bucks in upfront costs. Call it a quick fix / plug-n-play solution for instantly getting started with your office so that you can focus on things more important! You can also help us spread the word by telling your friends about us.

Here is a the screenshot of a few products:

Very quickly, here is how it works:

Some of the milestones we’ve achieved:

  • Hired tech dudes over vodka shots – the one who coded better when high made the cut.

  • Attended a customer at 3AM. Converted! 😛

That was because we’re promoting – call us anytime, we don’t have a life.

Here’s what Yourstory & techpanda said about us. Very recently, we were also on HT.

Look forward to your suggestions. We’re on Facebook & Twitter (@rentomojo). I’ll leave you guys with a punny take we did to convey our message.

Oh and did I forget, I’m super-excited to be attending my first-ever OH finally m/ 

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25 Comments

  1. “That was because we’re promoting – call us anytime, we don’t have a life.”

    whoa! that’s a tough positioning to keep up with! 

    nice. i like the idea and i think you are solving a real pain point. let’s hear what everyone else has to say!

    all the best.

    ps: pls let me know which OH you are talking about….  and pls invite me as well!!! 

  2. Thanks a lot Asha,

    Tough positioning it is but we are sort of working round the clock, so that helps.

    I was referring to the next Mumbai OH whenever it’s here. I spent last 4 years in Kolkata complaining to Darshan why we never had one over there! On a curious note, when to expect it?

  3. I love this!

    Call us – we dont have a life!

  4. Thanks Gurudev, I know you may not ever need it; still just for the fun of it, try ordering a few things on monthly rentals with us to boost us with some Milo energy 🙂

  5. whats wrong with the site? why doesnt it load?

  6. Alok could you share what error you’re getting?

    After your comment, we checked it on multiple browsers and devices & with a few friends to be doubly sure, working fine at our end.

  7. Real awesome.

    I am excited about using this.

    the delivery fee is a bit of a downer for some products.

    example i want a table in mumbai .

    so i need to pay 900+200 = 1100

    monthly cost = 1100

    i can purchase the table for 3000 and sell it after a month for 2500 .

    monthly cost = 500

    so no go 🙂

    But everything from the idea to the site looks real neat .

    only delivery is a bit of detterent.

    1 idea for sourcing – hyper local rentals .

    folks near me can rent out their stuff and i can use it so no delivery fee .

    on that note checkout spinlister.

    TC cheers

    Karan

  8. Hey Karan,

    Thanks a ton for your feedback. Let me reply to the product and delivery price-point first. 900 for shipping is the one time cost to you not recurring. And mind you, 900 takes care of delivery and pick-up both. If you compare that with what local vendors charge you (above close to 2000-3000 for one-way in most cases), it’s a tiny cost to you.

    So first time you pay Rs.200 x 3 months = Rs.600 as refundable security deposit + 900 (shipping charges) and second month onward you only pay Rs.200 every month. Btw, we’re not offering for 1 month, so if you do the math for 6 months usage, I believe it makes sense to rent. Also economics will work out better if you order more than a single item, this is one reason why we’re promoting packages for homies and offices. In fact smooth and cost-effective delivery is one of the disruptions we’re aiming to achieve.

    Hyper local rentals is a nice idea and we’re working on something similar in terms of creating local locality bubbles. Spinlister looks great, are you associated with it? Loved it.

  9. no i am not associated with spin lister – just gave example for hyper local rentals.

  10. Superb…can feel the energy :))

    Will be calling you guys in couple of days.

  11. Looking forward to your call Deepak.

  12. Congratulations!!! to YOU and the entire Rentomojo Team on Finding your MOJO !!!

    Though Facebook is also now looking at craigslist kind buying and selling too with all of their Groups members as per the latest updated doing the rounds recently.

    You can also connect with Mithun Chandra of Tête-à-Rent

    Thank you TRHS – we got an insane response!

    You should look at checking the Niche in this niche segment that you can further cater too with the logistics and warehousing Pan India to facilitate and filling them up with a variety of items likewise too to keep them available and easily moving too.

    You should also look at some of the Niche areas where renting makes perfect sense than just regular Furniture like the Temporary disablement for someone who has had an accident or illness and would want to rent out a self Raised Bed, Walking sticks, Toilet chair and other similar items which would be not required (God Forbid) after the recovery if bought becomes a bit difficult to sell them as well or pass on until someone needs similar things in the known network as well.

    You can also look at Baby items as a package like your other packages, since that is something which would go a longer way until the Baby no longer needs them too or until another one is on the way as well for New parents.

    Home loans once are approved they also have a Renovation loan made available you can also look into the niche and connect with the banks or loan approval agencies which are doing this so they can rent out the required items to the ones getting approvals as a package so it becomes easier for the parties involved to know the exact cost too.

    Then there are the regular CAB renting and other travel related booking that can be added as well.

    Once again Congratulations on the Funding!! Cheers!

    Creating Fortunes, by Rendering Fortunes of Service!

    #JustBeingMysElf

    Think – Do – Be
    TheRodinHoodS.com
    Networking Officer
    Admin #WikiRH

  13. Prashant it looks like good idea…hope to see its successful journey

    My thought…

    If customer pays two times the cost of the product as rent… they can keep the product with them no need to return

    if they are paying one n half the cost …this may motivate them to keep it for some more time and have it..

    Cheers..

     

  14. Thank you Sirji. First of all, it’s a blessing to have your feedback on the post!

    The Facebook thing, maybe we can push Facebook to add a rent button too beside buy and sell 😛 We are literally at war against buying 😀 With the kind of shared economy we’re opening up to globally, renting things at every next moment in life will make more sense. So you are going to attend a friend’s wedding, you rent a new set of wedding wear and a few gadgets and possibly pack it all in the luggage bag you rented, all this to fly on your rented chartered plane to your destination, where your car on rent takes you to the location.

    Thanks for pointing out the niche segments, have taken a note of them on our product road map. Each of them needs a careful analysis and execution. The cab thing honestly is not in the plans but who knows 😉 Btw on a personal note, there is a lot of scope in the cab space alone – you create a merge of Uber and zoomcar and you have a new model of community-based car rentals where idle cars that snore all the while when their owners are at work can be shared on rent! Hopefully soon we’ll have someone doing this as well.

    Have pinged Mithun, thanks for helping connect.

    Loved the line – creating fortunes, by rendering fortunes of service.

  15. Thanks Prasad. These are vital feedback which will help sharpen our model further. I’ve taken a note and have passed it on to our team.

  16. Great Concept.. Just FYI – I mistyped the url as rentmojo.com instead of rentomojo.com. I am not sure but looks like it can be a common mistake by direct visitors.

  17. Hi Prashant,

    Real estate consultants might be a good community for you to tap – they will be able to get you more (repeat) business with less effort. Sometimes their transactions don’t go through because of the price difference between the owner providing the furniture/fixtures or not. They could partner with you to close their deals!

    I run http://www.prorealtors.in a website that helps real estate consultants get more business. Happy to post an email interview with you on our blog blog.prorealtors.in which we will promote to our existing members and email list. Please call me on 9820855056 or prorealtorsin@gmail.com

    A few suggestions:

    • You could charge a premium for ‘fresh’ ‘1st renter’ pieces.

    • Have a plan where a person could buy off the furniture/appliances from you after using it – 

    • Invest in some quirky limited edition furniture where you will get a premium – it would serve as as show off value for renters.

    Raj

  18. Hi Anoop, you are right. We are aware of the same as pointed out by a few more people. Unfortunately Rentmojo is taken and we can’t do much about it at this point in time 🙁

  19. Hello Raj,

    Thanks for your valuable suggestions, have taken a note. Unsure about the 1st one though, instead of charging a 1st renter premium, we want to make sure the 2nd renter or subsequent ones get almost similar quality, for which we have a team that’s strict on QC and maintenance. Idea is to stand by quality we promise rather than making money out of premium. Second suggestion looks cool, we’re working on this.

    Let me call first half tomorrow if that works for you, leaving a mail tonight anyway.

    Thanks, Prashant

  20. What a synergy – super!!

  21. the next mumbai OH was announced last week prashant – have you rsvped yet??!!

  22. Done dana done Asha!

    Pl let me know what can I do to volunteer. Though not sure of any pre-event commitments and my free time, I’ll surely be my 100% on the event day!

  23. how’s rentomojo doing prashant? long time no updates….!

  24. Inspired by rental apps –

    I started facebook group to rent each others experiments to support learning by doing.
    Please join in guys and give away your experiments on rent.

    the group is on this link

    https://www.facebook.com/groups/628782090556742/

  25. many congrats prashant and team! just read this – https://thetechportal.in/2015/11/23/rentomojo-series-a/

    do update your post with the awesome news!

    so i guess that funding event you attended did help :))))

    so happy for you!

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