The rental market in India is gradually evolving, owing to a change in the mindset of people. Renting a house, furniture or clothes is no longer merely driven by affordability, as compared to buying them. Rather, people are now choosing the rental option, to be able to live a good lifestyle. This changing trend, presents an opportunity for organized players and rental services companies to step in. Bangalore based Settlrs is one such rental services company for furniture, home appliances, electronic and IT infrastructure. It caters to B2B clients in the housing sector, enabling them to shift from & outright purchase model to “pay per use” & model at reasonable monthly rentals. It is currently incubated at NSRCEL, IIMB.

Settlrs was initially planned as a B2C platform for rentals when the ideation happened. It was during the course of the planning that the market segmentation was done. Both B2C and B2B was looked as options, then work began in B2C but soon an order came from a person staying in rented place operated by a housing player. The idea of someone ordering rental items into a place operated by a housing player triggered us to

explore the B2B market. Back to drawing board and we worked on the identifying the B2B customers and then restart our offerings to them. "Founded in late 2017, we started our B2B operations in April 2018. The journey for last 18 months has been fantastic in terms of our growth and learning in the market. We happen to raise a round of fund as well during the journey," speaks Nishanth Janadri, Co-founder, Settlrs.

Settlrs has tremendously grown in terms of revenue and is expecting to touch 3.5 crores by March 2020

The company offers an array of rental services that includes renting of products such as Furniture, Home Appliances, Fitness and Games, Computer IT infrastructure. The primary target audiences are the co-living players, co-working players, student living players. It builds customized products that are strong and durable. "We use quality materials that ensure superior build quality and result in minimal wear & tear over prolonged use. Also, the products are curated by trained designers. They curate perfect furniture packages to suit your customer's needs. These packages transform living spaces making them feel premium," mentions Gaurav Ranebennur, Co-founder.

The Growth
Since inception the company has come a long way from where it began. The company has tremendously grown in terms of revenue and it is expecting to touch 3.5 crores by March 2020 with the turn over for the last 11 months being 2.2crores. It has also reached up to 60 business customers till date. Settlrs would be adding newer portfolios and expanding in newer geographies. Settlrs would be adding newer portfolios and expanding in newer geographies. The company is currently working to automate things by enabling tech stack for itself and is hiring a next set of leaders to take the company forward and replicate the growth.

"We are open to collaborating with Brands and Manufactures to work on bringing their portfolios on its platform and give them recurring business out of it. We are a young startup and we are always open to talking to people and understand the way how we can position ourselves still better," he concludes.