Exclusive: Peer-to-peer renting marketplace Rentomo gets $100K in seed funding

Bangalore-based Rentomo Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs peer-to-peer renting marketplace Rentomo.com, has received a seed funding of $100,000 (around Rs 67 lakh) from Shiva Ashok, an angel investor, and another unnamed UAE based investor.

The startup expects to close a bigger round of Rs 4.5 crore ( around $673,000) within a month from individual investors who are in leadership positions in well-known Indian internet companies, Anshul Johri, founder, Rentomo told VCCircle.

Founded by Johri, a former Amazon engineer, in May 2015, Rentomo has 4000 registered users in Bangalore and 1000 users across Delhi, Lucknow and Pune.

Johri said the startup first wants to expand operations in Bangalore before scaling up operations in other cities. "We currently do 250 transactions a month in Bangalore. We handle end-to-end operations here with the help of third party logistics players," he said. Johri said people rent out mainly two-wheelers, bicycles and cameras.

Peer-to-peer renting is a fledgling new-age business where companies need to deal with a host of issues concerning item security, payment and maintenance.

"We have so far not faced any issues. However, this platform works on the basis of trust between the owner and the borrower. We are now building a social media-based 'trust network' in the backend to improve the comfort factor," said Johri. "We do offline verification and address verification. As we grow, we might face challenges in this respect. We are now talking to insurance companies to cover the risk factors," he said.

A number of startups have emerged in the renting space. Furniture and home appliance renting startup Rentomojo received $2 million in pre-series funding from Accel Partners and IDG in November. Other players in this segment include GrabOnRent and MeshApp.