Last year, when Shubham Jain and his friends moved to Bangalore to expand their business operations, they sold all their furniture in Calcutta with plans of buying everything they needed in Bangalore. However, they weren’t prepared for the tough time they had when they went looking for new office furniture. It was hugely expensive and involved a tidy investment.
“That’s when the idea of GrabOnRent was born,” says Shubham who along with his friends Manish S. Sugandhi and Aditya Sharma, launched a portal for rental furniture by tying up with over 150 companies across Bangalore. They launched by offering furniture on rent on a monthly and even hourly basis.
A deluge of online companies are now doing brisk business in the domain of furniture rentals. You can get your hands on top-rate office and home furniture without having to dig deep into your pocket. You name it and it’s available for renting — beds, sofa sets, coffee tables, dining sets, study tables, chairs and even bean bags. The best part is that, depending on the product, prices for a month’s rental can be as rock bottom as Rs 199.
“We rent out a three-seater couch at just Rs 1,350 per month which is even cheaper than two large pizzas,” says Ajith Karimpana, owner and CEO of Furlenco, a rental website that offers affordable furnishing solutions.
And that’s not all. You can pay a nominal rental and enjoy the latest gaming consoles, gadgets, fitness equipment and home appliances too.
“There’s a huge demand for PS4s and XBox360s that are available for rent for a minimum period of one week,” says Neerav Jain of City Furnish, an online platform that also offers designer furniture. After having launched in Delhi-NCR and Bangalore, Jain is now planning to cast his net wide to reach across Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
Furlenco, operational in Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune, also offers free relocation and furniture-cleaning services to its clients. It also has a feature called Swipe, through which one can swap the existing rented furniture with new stuff. “We rent out around 3,000 sofas and 4,000 beds every month,” says Karimpana, who launched Furlenco three years ago with an initial investment of Rs 50 lakh and has already furnished around 7,000 homes. “About 45 per cent of our clientele comprises young couples and bachelors who migrate to different cities for work,” says Karimpana.
The brand has a team of 20 designers that creates the designs, which are passed on to the manufacturers they work with.
One of the popular packages available for rent is Bounce, foam mattresses that come with a pouffe, two cushions and a utility box. “Bounce can be rented for Rs 1,099 per month but a value package of Rs 1,250 per month gets you an additional pop-up table,” he adds.
City Furnish, on the other hand, manufactures furniture in its factory in Jodhpur. It offers two lines of solid shisham furniture called Belle and Alixa. Says Jain, who has furnished over 175 homes so far: “While Belle is a stylish line Alixa is more about sturdy furniture.” The two lines offer everything from colourful patch-work chairs to simple yet elegant dining tables. “We focus on utility so our beds come with sliding under-beds and rolling under-storage that are space-saving. We’re also planning to add attached bookshelves to these beds,” he says.
But if you want more help, most companies can also curate the look of your entire home through customised packages. But you’ll need to hire the furniture for a minimum period of three months.
For instance, the living room package from Furlenco throws in a sofa set, a centre table, a floor lamp, a tealight holder down to the soft furnishings upwards of Rs 2,000 per month, while a bedroom package will give you a queen-size bed with a mattress, a single bed-side table, a table lamp, a photo frame and soft furnishings for Rs 1,500 per month. Furnishing the entire house could cost between Rs 1,750 and Rs 6,500 per month, says Karimpana.
Another company, RentoMojo, has gone a step ahead and even offers home appliances on rent. So, from a microwave to vacuum cleaners, from an LED TV to refrigerators, the company has everything on offer for Rs 299 to Rs 999 per month. “There’s a huge demand for kitchen appliances on rent,” says Geetansh Bamania, co-founder of the company that operates in Delhi-NCR and also Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.
The brand works with local carpenters and offers premium teak furniture, faux leather sofas, wardrobes and beds. “The costs come down when you hire our products for a longer period,” says Bamania.
The advantage of renting is that you don’t have to worry too much about wear and tear. GrabOnRent makes sure that all products are painted or cleaned before they are delivered and Furlenco offers 100 per cent refund if you don’t like its products. “In case products get spoilt, we write-off damages upto Rs 10,000,” says Karimpana.
So, drop that extra baggage while moving house and just rent all that you need!
