One month after launch, rental marketplace Forent has raised P500,000 from local angel fund Buko Ventures to help acquire new users for their growing community. Spanning houses, automobiles, equipment, clothing, and more, the digital listing platform hopes to centralize the siloed rental communities that often exist across social media groups, while tackling the informal industry’s rampant scamming issues.
“Not only does Forent want to eliminate scammers through its merchant screening, ratings, and review features, but we also want to fix the existing long and tedious process of the overall rental experience,” said Jayvee de Leon, chief executive officer of Forent.
According to De Leon, the traditional online renting experience is a frustrating one to navigate. If one were planning a wedding, you’d need to book a venue, secure equipment, find a gown, book transportation—each item sourced from its own specific listing service or social media community group. Forent positions itself as a singular, safe environment for renting a wide range of items, only charging a transaction fee on successful rentals.
With his app, De Leon hopes to tap into the growing market for rental services in the Philippines—a lucrative, but deeply segmented sector. In the country, vacation rentals alone are expected to grow at a rate of 20.3% over the next five years, generating revenues of $489.3 million by 2025. While Forent has seen early traction listing staycation homes, private pools, and party venues, other categories include vehicles, wedding gowns, event supplies, GoPro cameras, meeting rooms, and condominiums.
Rental marketplaces are a uniquely challenging model, with generally lower value and lower frequency transactions. A few standouts like AirBnB thrive by focusing on higher value listings and incentivizing suppliers to build full-time careers around managing their rental services on the platform. Forent hopes to do the same by allowing their verified merchants to list items for free and by focusing on event spaces, vehicles, and fashion listings.
Forent currently has just over 600 downloads, with 58 listings on its marketplace from verified merchants located across Metro Manila, Laguna, Cavite, Bulacan, Zambales, and Ilocos. Following their recent investment from Buko Ventures, they’ll be spending the next few months aggressively acquiring new users on both the supply and demand sides.
Another investee of the angel fund, campus gaming startup AcadArena, recently went on to raise $3.5 million in seed funding from global investors, after growing its nationwide community to span 150,000 students across 500 schools.
Forent is currently available for download on both iOS and Android devices.