An Interview with Mr. Amit Sodhi and Mr. Vineet Chawla, Founders of Rentickle.com

Rentickle is an entity dedicated to service the consumers who need lifestyle enhancement products and are not sure about the tenure they will need these for. At Rentickle, offers a one-stop shop for conveniently renting furniture, appliances, and other lifestyle enhancement products at the click of the mouse. With a range of high-quality, stylish, brand new products to choose from starting at INR 99 a month, buying second-hand goods will soon be a thing of the past!

Q1. Hi, Amit and Vineet. Welcome to DSIM. Let’s talk about your business, tell us how it all started – where did your vision for Rentickle come from?

Ans. Rentickle is dedicated to providing lifestyle enhancement products to one and all without burdening the household budget with hefty capital expenditures. We offer a winning solution whereby our consumers can rent brand new furniture and appliances and return these once their need is fulfilled. To incentivize our esteemed consumers we also offer reducing rentals as the tenure of renting increases.

There is a pressing need among young professionals, expats, newly married couples, professionals on short-term postings to new cities for furniture and appliances and other lifestyle products and we help them create a comfortable home with cost effective renting solutions. At Rentickle, we want to help out our consumers with all of this.

Q2. Magnificent vision with “Rentickle” Great name! How did you come up with it?

Ans. “Rent” plus “tickle” was the idea behind the name. The name is cool, clearly delivers the renting solutions message and is also unique with a “ckle” suffix, which is proven to be high on brand recall on various research platforms.

Q3. Amit, what are some of the most common barriers to insight for your clients?

Ans. Unlike markets like US and North America, in India there were no professional companies offering these renting solution services in a consumer-centric way for many years As a result the consumers had to make do with localized small-time shopkeepers and their offerings of second-hand furniture (and hardly anyone would offer appliances like TV, Refrigerators etc.) with little or no focus on quality, aesthetics or choice to consumers.

Thankfully for the industry and the consumers, the last year few years have seen professional companies in India offering renting services and now consumers and even corporates are slowly getting educated about the benefits of renting instead of buying, thereby converting their Capital expenditure into Operating Expenditure. It a clear winning solution once the consumers get educated about this wonderful cost effective and practical concept.

Q4. Wonderful Amit. Can you expand on how digital marketing has been integral to your marketing strategy?

Ans. Like most businesses in today’s world, digital marketing is an integral part of the strategy for any marketer. The clutter and high costs involved in ATL, BTL, and outdoor media clearly spell out the need for targeted and focused approach in reaching out to the right TG. Our campaigns on Social Media, Ad words, SEO and targeted e -mailer campaigns have proven to be one of the most cost effective solutions for brand awareness, brand recall, and eventually customer acquisition objectives.

Q5. Vineet, can you tell us as there is stiff competition in the market for startups, how to survive in this competition?

Ans. As the age, old adage goes- the fittest only survive, and this is never more true of anything else than a start-up company. Eventually, the race is won by those who spend judiciously, plan ahead of the competition, learn every day how to be better than yesterday and stay consumer focused.

Q6. Nice Vineet. How do you think the Rentickle.com will evolve during the next 5 years?

Ans. Our vision is to educate consumers and corporates in India about the benefits of converting capital expenditure into operating expenditure and offer them winning solutions which entail only need to be based expenditure.

We will soon be offering more categories on rent like treadmills, sports equipment, adventure gear, travel gear, baby equipment etc. Eventually, we want to reach a stage where the consumer thinks of Rentickle as the first name for renting anything he or she needs and we hope to reach there much earlier than 5 years.

Q7. We hope so! So, at last, one more question, any words of wisdom for young entrepreneurs that are afraid of starting something new?

Ans. Fear of failure is worse than failure. And finally, there are no failures, only lessons to be learned for a better future.
An idea which serves the consumers better than anyone else, perseverance, self-motivation and a dedicated team with faith in the founders and the business concept are the key to early stage success.

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