Bangalore-based Edunetwork Pvt Ltd, which operates online rental marketplace for furniture, home appliances and bikes RentoMojo, has raised $10 million (Rs 64.3 crore) in a Series B round of funding led by Bain Capital Ventures and Renaud Laplanche, a French-American entrepreneur, a company statement said.
Existing investors Accel Partners and IDG Ventures also participated in the round, the statement added. As part of the transaction, Laplanche will join the board of RentoMojo. He is the founder and chief executive of US-based Upgrade, an online lending platform for unsecured loans. He also earlier founded peer-to-peer lending platform Lending Club, which is currently listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The firm will use the funds to further strengthen its product, ramp up its leadership team, and to expand into new categories and geographies, the press note stated.
“In India’s credit-constrained economy, RentoMojo has built a defensible beachhead in multiple categories in an underserved sector in the subscription economy, with a capital-efficient two-sided marketplace, no balance-sheet risk and network effects at scale,†said Salil Deshpande, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures.
Prior to this funding round, the company had previously raised $5 million in a Series A round in 2016 and $2 million in a pre-Series A round in 2015 from Accel Partners and IDG Ventures.
RentoMojo was founded in November 2014 by IIT Madras graduates Geetansh Bamania and Ajay Nain. The startup allows users to rent furniture, home furnishings and appliances, and bikes for at least three months. The company has plans to introduce newer categories in the coming months.
“India is credit-constrained. We have consumer lending, but not consumer leasing. We believe that the leasing value-proposition is stronger than lending, especially for today's youth which opts to pay as they use, rather than buying,†Bamania, who is the chief executive at the firm, said in the statement.
RentoMojo currently offers its services in Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad and claims to have more than 25,000 subscribers on the platform.
A couple of ventures in the broad online rental have received investor attention recently. Last month, VCCircle reported that RentOnGo, an online marketplace for renting bikes, electronics and appliances, raised an undisclosed amount from Chennai-based two-wheeler manufacturer TVS Motors.
In March this year, Bengaluru-based product rental marketplace GrabOnRent Internet Pvt. Ltd was close to raising $3 million (Rs 19.5 crore) in its Series A funding, after securing a pre-Series A round in June last year from IvyCap Ventures and Unicorn India Ventures.