MyRent, an innovative peer-to-peer on-demand rental marketplace, is set to formally launch today in Singapore. MyRent will allow Singaporeans to rent all sorts of items including photography and sporting equipment to seasonal apparel and video games.
For Singaporean consumers, you can now, for the first time, rent a Canon EOS 550D for as low as SGD5/day or a DJI Spark Drone for SGD6/day. It is the brainchild of three co-founders; Ishwar Dhanuka, Rahul Sharma and Mark Kok who all have extensive experience growing and working in a variety of startups, including companies such as Funding Societies, and PropertyGuru.
Ishwar Dhanuka, CEO and Co-founder of MyRent, said, “We want to decentralise ownership, and create a win-win for both listers and renters — where the former can earn money by renting what they own and rarely use, while the latter can rent a product without actually having to pay the full amount to use it.”
MyRent has been developed to address a shift in consumer behaviour, with an increasing number of people opting to rent items and engage in a sharing economy — rather than purchasing products for their own use. Since its soft launch in December 2018, MyRent now has more than 2,000 registered users in Singapore alone.
According to a study jointly published by Google and Temasek, Singapore’s e-commerce market is valued at over USGD1 billion. Of this, online shopping comprised 2.1 per cent of all retail sales in 2015, but is projected to soar to USGD5.4 billion by 2025.
Sean Eng, a merchant who uses the rental platform, said, “Before our partnership with MyRent, customers had to pay a deposit to rent one of our GoPros for their holidays — which they were hesitant to do. With MyRent, we’ve now been able to get rid of the deposit requirement, so customers are happier and more than willing to rent with us via this platform.”
MyRent can be accessed via their web portal or through a dedicated app that is available for both iOS and Android users.
The startup plans to make its peer-to-peer rental platform available in more markets, with a Malaysian release date slated for end-2019.