Venture Garage portfolio company RENT IT BAE raises funding from GEMs VC

New Delhi, 7 Feb 2019: Venture Garage today announced that it’s“Garager” company RENT IT BAE has closed an investment round with GEMS VC, a VC fund in New Delhi. Co-founded by Aanchal Saini, Ricky Gujral, Amit Sharma and Karan Gujral, RENT IT BAE is a luxury fashion rental service that offers Ethnics, Westerns & Accessories from designer labels and brands on rent at a fraction of the market purchase price.

CEO of Venture Garage, Vivek Kumar expressed, “At Venture Garage our goal is to add value to the lives of promising entrepreneurs by supporting them with fund raising, go-to-market, and tech-strategy to build scalable enterprises that can solve large scale problems. We are joyed to see the RENT IT BAE team doing well.”

“2.5 years in the business, I have witnessed the world move towards a shared economy and this is only the beginning. This sector is going to rise geometrically. We have created a scalable model and the technology plays an important role here. The sense of happiness I feel creating RENT IT BAE is immeasurable. Every day is Phenomenal.”, said Aanchal Saini who is also the CEO of RENT IT BAE.

“We are excited about our investment in RENT IT BAE and also to be associated with the talent behind the company. Our belief is that clothing rentals is the next major business frontier in the rental market. Looking good and feeling good are hallmarks of today’s environment and culture. Rent It Bae addresses this very opportunity at affordable prices. We believe that the demand will be huge and ever increasing. We are proud to support Aanchal and her team in this venture.”, Aditya Gupta, Managing Partner, GEMs

GEMs VC is founded by a group of entrepreneurs and has invested in close to 15 cutting-edge start-ups across IoT, Med-tech, SaaS solutions,Travel & Logistics, Music, Online Marketplaces for Travel, Fashion Rental, QSR and Community Analytics & Content platform.

With the new infusion of capital the company plans on increasing its physical presence in Delhi NCR with more stores and increase service locations to 30 across the country. All the RENT IT BAE stores would be tech driven as is the Flagship Store. “Technology will be the essence of the business always”, says the founding team “and the aim is to induce technology in such a way that our customers can make use of it at all levels while experiencing the RENT IT BAE service”.

“It was really exciting to work on the transaction with GEMs. The fashion rentals space needs a tech-focussed, inventory-less play to scale, much like any other rental market. However, offline plays a significant role too given that touch and feel factor is required to convert customers into orders. RENT IT BAE is sweetly placed in this spot.”, added Vineet Sagar, Managing Partner, Venture Garage.

The business is scale ready now servicing 12 cities via Website, m-site, Android & iOS app.  RENT IT BAE is the first to offer Monthly Fashion Subscription (Unlimited Clothes and accessories @ Rs. 3999/-per month). The company has recently opened its Flagship Store at Rajouri Garden, New Delhi which is the country’s first tech-driven fashion experience. The company is doing a annual revenue of Rs. 2 Crore which is stated to scale to Rs. 6 Crores by the end of 2019. The funding amount in this round is undisclosed.

Lendbox, A Venture Garage portfolio company, Raises Pre Series A from IVYCap Ventures

Lendbox, a Credit market place, has secured Rs. 6 Crore in a pre-series A funding round from IvyCap Ventures, making it the first investment by a large institutional investor in India’s peer-to-peer lending space.

Lendbox is one of the fastest growing P2P lenders in the country, and with an estimated 40% of the Indian adult population having taken a loan from informal sources, literally sky is the limit. Retail Investors on Lendbox can invest between Rs.25,000- Rs.10 Lacs and borrowers can borrow anywhere between Rs. 25,000 to 5 Lacs.

Lendbox is the founding member of the Association of P2P Lending Platforms in India  which has been formed to liaise with the regulators and also create industry awareness amongst all stakeholders. Founders Ekmmeet Singh, Bhuvan Rustagi, and Jatin Malwal strongly believe that P2P lending democratises finance, and the future of finance is in dis-intermediation of Banks from the lending-borrowing process. Both Bhuvan and Jatin are Forbes Asia 30 Under 30, 2017 – Finance and Venture Capital.

IvyCap Ventures founder Vikram Gupta showed confidence in the peer-to-peer lending marketplace, highlighting the recent RBI guidelines as a small but significant step for the P2P lending space.

Venture Garage founding team, Vivek Kumar and Vineet Sagar, reposed faith and confidence in the team at Lendbox saying, “It was indeed fun advising the team. Our goal with startups is to enable the founding team to raise capital from our investor network. We are glad we were able to help Lendbox get funded. We see Lendbox as the No.1 player in this space in the next 3 years”.

About Venture Garage: Venture Garage works with early stage business in fundraising. VG also offers a “GARAGER” program to enable and equip start-ups in the areas of strategy, go-to-market, digital, and technology with a view to scaling up fast and attracting angel, seed funds and venture capital.