‘Rent It Bae’ plans to expand across cities

RIB: You could now reinvent your closet

Aanchal Saini along with Amit Sharma, Karan Gujral and Jaspreet Gujral left their successful careers in law and IT to follow their collective passion for entrepreneurship. The young brigade has created a unique model that addresses the need of the niche urban youth. Founded in 2016, Rent It Bae (RIB) claims to be a premium tech enabled fashion rental service that brings latest fashion to people’s doorstep.

Delhi-based Aanchal Saini (30 years), CEO and head of business, has been the stellar force behind spawning and conceptualization of Rent It Bae. She is responsible for running all the facets of business, right from procurement to business development. Prior to Rent It Bae, Aanchal was a practicing lawyer.

Jaspreet with 11+ years of industry experience at various executive and management positions at top MNCs is the Chief Operating Officer of the company. She is responsible for the day-to-day leadership. Karan drives the innovation strategy and growth of RIB portal and ensures technology excellence. Amit is involved making business and technical decisions, implementing strategies, performing predictive analysis, forecasting and building sustainable and happy workforce.

In an engaging chat with Baishali Mukherjee, the youngpreneur from Delhi, Aanchal Saini, elaborates on her entrepreneurial journey.

We Love to Dress You Up

The idea was born on an evening where I couldn't find one dress to wear for the evening in spite of spending a fortune on fashion. The problem of ‘nothing to wear, and not enough space for all the clothes’ was severe. RIB works on a simple matrix that "You Don't Have to Be a Devil to Wear Prada.”  Every woman should dress beautifully every day of her life without having to spend a fortune of her earnings.

Our tag line defines us the best “We Love to Dress You Up!” We firmly believe that every woman has the right to look good, at all times. One may not be a celebrity, can surely dress like one! At RIB, we take great joy in helping you reinvent your closet. From now on, no girl has to repeat clothes. The wide variety of brands and designer labels are available at 10 per cent to 15 per cent of the retail price. Our product range includes western brands, ethnic labels and accessories.

Way ahead of the curve

Aanchal Saini

We boot strapped our venture with an initial investment of about Rs 2.2 crore and have managed to sustain well till date. The plan was to run the show on our own and understand the market and it’s potential. I can proudly state that we are way ahead of the curve. As per plan and successfully running the venture for almost a year we have just started to look for investment.

The total app downloads (Android/iOS) of RIB today stands at 50K. We have more than 2000 designs, 5k daily active users and more than 150 Brands and Designers in our fold. Presently we are planning to expand our collection, add new categories, and launch men's collection. Also we plan to go multi city.

With 353K users, 65 per cent repeat transacting users, 2.5 cr. worth inventory, Alexa India Rank: 14k and having catered to 50+ orders on a single day we consider the going, suitably great. Our revenue streams include four-day rental orders, Rent-a-Trunk (vacation package) and monthly Fashion Subscription.

What’s new?

For the Fashionistas we have recently launched our monthly Fashion Subscription wherein one could dress new every day.  It is a monthly subscription model which endows a user with a box in which she can add two garments and one accessory. When you are done using the products you may request for an exchange with new products. You can exchange your box unlimited times in a month at a cost of Rs 3999.

For the best user experience, we have a personalized delivery system. We cater to the whole of Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad and Faridabad. With two offices in New Delhi (South and West) and warehouses across the city, we have a team of 25 employees and our HR division takes care of recruitments.

Business growth

The growth graph has been tremendous so far. We have added many features and products since we started. In the beginning we [the core team] did everything on our own. From handling customer queries to deliveries I have myself steam ironed the garments and packed the boxes and have even delivered at the customer's doorstep. This we still like to do once in a while without letting the customers know that we are the founders. We are India's first and only company offering Fashion Subscription. The company has gained popularity for the niche service we offer.

Challenges

Educating the market and making women accept the newfound ways was one big challenge amongst many others. But once women use our services they are our regular clients. The company has an excellent repeat-user percentage.

Success stories

We managed to deliver 18 ethnic outfits within 3.5 hours to 18 Mexican women staying at Taj. (Usual time taken for delivery of ethnic outfit is 3 days). The Fashion Emergency feature on the portal is taken seriously. Our Customer Care received a call at 2:30 a.m. requesting for an outfit to be delivered at 7:00 a.m. for the customer's birthday. We did it well in time. Client satisfaction is taken way too seriously at RIB.

A client ordered a saree for her special occasion. Since the client was exceptionally tall, the length of the saree was seemed to be a little short for her and she realized this while she was almost ready for the occasion. The team bought a new saree at 9 pm in the night and delivered it to her within an hour.  Our team was delivering orders till 10 pm in the night on the 31st December 2016 and resumed deliveries again from 8:00 a.m.

Do you think a dressing portal could be a sustainable business in our country? Do share your views.