Inc42 Daily Brief
Stay Ahead With Daily News & Analysis on India’s Tech & Startup Economy
Online rental marketplace RentSher has raised more than $300K in seed funding. The round was led by Dubai-based ex-McKinsey investor Vaibhav Doshi, along with a clutch of other well-known entrepreneurs turned investors including Abhay Singhal, co-founder of In Mobi; Vibhu Garg, co-founder and COO of Unnicommerce; Joby Babu, COO at Nimbuzz; Abhishek Acharya, GM Philips India and Manish Shah of Wipro, UK.
The yet to be launched startup, RentSher, is a horizontal marketplace for rental products that provides end-to-end services from choosing and booking the product online to delivering and picking up.
It was started by Abhijit Shaha, Harsh Dhand and Karandeep S Vohra, alumni of IIT Delhi and Oxford University. Karandeep is presently leading the operations in Delhi.
Harsh Dhand, co-founder and CEO of RentSher, said, “Our vision is to make RentSher a platform that is at the intersection of sharing economy and on-demand economy with products delivered as and when our customers need them. We are building a strong team focused on sustaining 30-40% month-on-month growth that will enable us to reach 1000 orders/month this quarter itself and double it by next quarter.”
The startup has already fulfilled orders for Windmill Asia event, which saw 10000+ visitors, LIFE conference in 4 cities and Podar Jumbo Kids Annual Days for its 54 centres.
Abhijit Shaha, president of Product and Strategy said that the company has a strong supply side and operations capability. It aims to strengthen the platform and build some of the industry-defining features such as geo-tagging and supply chain automation. The capital raised will be used in equal parts for product development, fulfilment and growth. The startup also plans to expand its reach to new cities and strengthen its operations in existing cities.
RentSher is currently operational in Bangalore and Delhi, and identifies that its customers range from parents, students and corporates. It provides services like costumes for school function to cultural events, office equipment like projectors, furniture, party props, men & women apparels, jewellery, camera, medical supplies and other utility stuff. Currently, the startup fulfills 18-20 orders in a day and has over 500 paying customers. Home appliances, furniture and laptops are its leading categories, with a recurring monthly revenue model.
The startup competes with other online marketplaces for renting products like What’sOnRent and Rentomo that raised funding in January this year. Besides, the other startups are FlatFurnish and CityFurnish.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.