Submitted By – Rishab Mahnot | MBA/0376/56

IDEA ARBITRAGE – Peer to Peer rental marketplace to borrow/rent products from your
neighbourhood
We often feel need for things but sometimes we cannot buy them. It can be because – 1. they
are very expensive (out of budget) or 2. one-time usage (hence not cost efficient to buy).
What if we can borrow or rent things from our neighbourhood using an online platform for
peer to peer sharing platform.
Peer to Peer rental platforms in other countries –
Platform Name Country Product Listings
Rent4Me1 More than 20 countries 70,000 +
Peerby2 Netherlands & Belgium data not available
Fat Llama3 UK data not available

These platforms provides product listings, purchase, shipping & assurance.

Why they could be successful in India –
A close proxy for “online rental platform” can be “online classified advertising platform” in
India – customers who cannot afford to buy new product often ends up buying second hand.
The two major players (in online classified advertising platform) are Olx & Quickr. Both are
growing very strongly in India, with Olx grown by 45% in last two years (as on 2019)4 and
Quikr by 70% last year (as on 2019)5.
Peer to Peer rental will be beneficial for both borrower (cost effective) and lender (make
money).
Current scenario in India –
There is a peer to peer rental service in India – Mutterfly. However, it only provides services
in Bengaluru and Mumbai. It has 500 product listings compared to 70,000 product listings of
Rent4Me.
Why we are on S-Curve - E-commerce market is growing rapidly right now in India6.
Online rental market can ride on its growth curve and acquire similar customers with less
purchasing power.

[1] – https://rent4me.org/
[2] - https://www.peerby.com/
[3] - https://fatllama.com/
[4] - https://bit.ly/3aXuRas
[5] - https://bit.ly/2QoQ9EA
[6] - https://www.ibef.org/industry/ecommerce.aspx