How Colive has changed the way Indian millennials think about house-hunting
Widely accepted by the co-living ecosystem as the “consumer platform of choice” for rented homes, this is the story of how rent-X by Colive is set to redefine millennial living in Indian metros.
Bangalore, June 27, 2022 : Colive launched as an operator of managed & fully furnished premium co-living spaces in 2016, and made a mark in the industry as a preferred provider among immigrant millennials aged 18 to 34 (Students, Professionals & Young Couples).
In 2020, when a global health crisis forced lakhs of young residents to flee metros & return to their hometowns, the traditional rental supply ecosystem (Paying Guest Hostels, Standalone Buildings, etc) faced a crisis in securing a steady supply of leads & tenants. The market model of the pre-COVID era was largely dependent on listings & classifieds, and social marketplace groups, with a huge trial & error based lead generation & transactional success rate.
This affected both tenants & home-owners, many of whom could not connect, despite there being a clear match of the right supply & the right demand at the right price. This is where Colive pioneered the concept of “rent-X” — India’s first & largest rental exchange platform, where all property owners could, in effect list themselves on a common exchange of room inventory in the micro-markets they have buildings in, and house-hunters, in turn would be able to “bid” on micro-markets as a holistic outreach mechanism, with a budget of their choosing, thereby initiating responses from all nearby home-owners who have chosen to accept, counter or reject that bid.
Long story short, before a tenant & home owner meet for the first time, or even before a tenant ever walks into a rental property, the deal is done. This means a total end to spam calls to & fro between incorrectly matched / exchanged leads, unsolicited calls from brokers, and the existential perils of an unmonitored, albeit lucrative industry.
rent-X acts as the perfect bridge between tenants & property owners, going as far as categorizing properties according to the budgetary preferences of home seekers, into premium co-living spaces (where Colive acts as the managed asset operator), affordable co-living spaces (networked under the Club Colive banner, where all listed properties are supervised & quality-monitored against a set of ‘Colive SOPs’ and whose tenants enjoy rent-inclusive retention rewards such as free fitness room access, coworking seats, and private entertainment lounges with cinema rooms), paying guest units (sold under the ‘Colive Lite’ banner & listed on the rent-X bidding platform and supplemented by Colive’s on-ground sales fleet), and most recently, Colive’s foray into family homes (Colive Max) and homes for India’s adult++ (Colive Vanaprastha, aimed at citizens aged above 55).
Aiming at a growth-oriented market north of a billion dollars & armed with an arsenal of prop-tech in power play, rent-X is exactly the kind of disruption that solves & wins India’s most lucrative recurring-revenue industry.