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/