Rentre Raises KRW 2.6B Pre-Series A to Accelerate Growth in Rental Market
Rentre, a Korean meta search aggregator for rental home appliances, raised 2.6 billion won in pre-SeriesA funding. The round was participated by Dasung Ventures, FuturePlay, DCamp, and the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund.
Rentre is a specialized rental platform for home appliances that compares, analyzes, and recommends rental products based on data. It provides one-stop support for the entire rental process, from product recommendation to price and quote comparison to contract and termination.
Rentre uses meta search technology to database rental products on the market and provides services such as “product recommendation” and “optimal contract condition design” based on customer data. Users can access rental products and contract terms distributed through multiple channels on the Rentre platform, and they can compare and select the final quote of their desired conditions at a glance through the seller’s reverse auction method. In addition, it has improved user convenience and contract transparency by digitizing the entire process from consultation to contract and providing it through chat.
As a result, Rentre has been growing by more than 15% every month since its official service launch in January 2023. As of August this year, it has achieved a monthly transaction volume of 29 billion won (US$2.3 million) and cumulative transaction volume of 300 billion won (US$23 million). In particular, it is rapidly occupying the online rental market, recording high growth rates, such as a conversion rate of 48% through customer-tailored recommendation services based on data. It is currently collaborating with rental companies such as LG Hellovision and KG Inicis to accelerate its entry into the B2C home appliance rental product distribution market.
Kim Jeong-min, CEO of Dasung Ventures, who led the investment, said, “We empathized with the needs of the rental market and Rentre’s innovative approach, and we highly evaluated the achievements of the Rentre team, which has achieved so far with only seed money investment. That’s why we decided to make it our first investment.”
Kwon Oh-hyung, CEO of FuturePlay, who co-led the pre-Series A investment, said, “As consumption patterns change, the value of convenient use is becoming more important than the value of ownership. Rentre is expected to grow into a rental service platform that is most beneficial to consumers in the growing rental market in various categories.”
Seo Hyun-dong, CEO of Rentre, said, “We plan to innovate the existing rental industry, which has remained in the analog distribution method, into a digital service, and grow into a commerce platform specialized in rental and real-world subscription services. We plan to expand our business more actively and aggressively in the real-world subscription market, which is growing in earnest, through this investment.”
In the meantime, Rentre raised seed investment from Mashup Angels, a venture capital firm specializing in early-stage startups, in May last year. After that, it won the “100th D-day” hosted by the D.Camp, the Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation of the Banking Industry, and was also selected for the TIPS (Tech Incubator Program) of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups.
