-Maya Angelou

The golden words of Maya Angelou sum up the importance of a place we call home, where dreams and aspirations find a safe shelter after a long and tiring day. We live in a remote and mobile world that believes in no boundaries when it comes to pursuing education or finding a job away from home. However, things turned south for Prashant Bharti, a development expert who tried finding a home, away from home in a hope to fast track his career.

The House Hunting Stress: A Dilemma for Every Millennial

When Prashant left his hometown for an opportunity in Delhi, the stress of house hunting took the best of him. It's not only Prashant, but the story of millions of millennials moving to fast-growing cities in India including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai or Pune. The heat of finding an affordable apartment close to your workplace or college, which also has essential amenities is something every apartment hunter can relate to. The brokerage market in India is worth more than $4bn that reflects the demand for finding and renting the right properties suiting one's preferences.

Looking Past Last Minute Apartment Hunting

Although Prashant managed to find a home nearby his workplace, it's not the case with everyone. The entire apartment hunting caused immense stress and frustration, the majority of which came from commuting long hours to visit a property and negotiating with brokers. It's a "double trouble" when you are supposed to pay the flat owner as well as the broker who helped you secure the place. The brokerage charges can be up to 50% of the monthly rent, which is truly pocket-pinching. Couple that with all the paperwork, rent agreements, and the cost to hire packers and movers; you are already broke. The charm of settling in a new place is all gone by this time.

A Relaxed Approach to Rental House Hunting: SocietyonRent

Prashant quickly realized that he is not alone in the struggle and millions go through the incessant stress of apartment hunting everyday. "I couldn't sleep for a minute from the stress and exertion I went through apartment hunting. The stress also impacted my performance at work."

During a midnight conversation, Prashant got in touch with his friend Rahul, a digital marketing expert and later with Manish and Nilesh, who are real-estate experts for 10+ years. The trio partnered with Parmendra Kumar and Suresh Bhatt, who possessed extensive marketing knowledge in the real-estate industry.

The conversation instigated the idea to build a platform that allows tenants to connect with homeowners and shortlist properties of their choice at their fingertips.

After conducting intensive market research, the idea took further shape to offer logistical solutions and negotiation on behalf of tenants to take away the entire hassle of apartment hunting. That's how SocietyonRent came to the rescue of tenants.

How Does SocietyonRent Works?

The platform aims to bridge the gap between homeowners and tenants and promote harmony with all-round solutions. While homeowners can post a free ad to rent their property, tenants can sign-up for different plans where the team does all the heavy lifting from:

• arranging the most cost-effective packers and movers company,
• negotiating with homeowners, managing rent agreements and other paperwork until you finally move-in to the property.

The platform also offers a genuine and holistic solution to house hunting with:

• Quality pictures
• Detailed amenities, and
• Accurate location maps for ease of selection

SocietyonRent offers complete freedom from hefty brokerage charges and all the stress that comes from apartment hunting in a new city.

The Roadmap for Future

The platform is completely bootstrapped as of now with over a million yearly revenue and operates in major metropolitan cities including Delhi, NCR, Pune, Bangalore, and Mumbai. The team is 30-people strong and they plan to expand further this year. "House hunting shouldn't be a pain for anyone and that's the vision we are chasing with SocietyonRent, says Prashant, founder at SocietyonRent." He further adds, "Over 20,000 tenants currently use our platform and we are planning to enhance our footprints to other states as well in 2020." The startup aims to be 100-people strong and reach 10 million in revenues by the end of 2020.