RentDex

About

RentDex is a side start-up which I am planning which will be meant to focus on providing people with the facility where house owners, clients, customers can exchange information effectively and inexpensively. This system will provide a user-friendly interface, satisfying the needs of the consumers. It will also employ a new strategy that will facilitate easy management of rental houses.

Market Demand

These days many youths especially in India are moving to major cities for job purposes or to achieve higher education so the first and foremost thing for them is to secure a roof above their head and most of them will opt for rental residence which is a more economical investment than buying a house so most of them will be willing to use our services as it will provide a safe and reliable source for them to find their desired place of stay.

We would be mainly catering the service to the people of India because for me my nation takes the highest priority and not only that but India holds the highest population of youth in the world moreover being a developing country the amount of people moving to urban areas is drastically increasing so I believe primarily focusing on India will be of great benefit.

Relevant Products in the Market

There are various rental apps in the market but the way we will be unique is that:

1. As a property manager or landlord, you won’t have to pay to accept and view rental applications on RentDex.
2. Sometimes, you may not be ready to start accepting all applications for a property. If you’re renovating, if it isn’t vacant yet, etc. These situations call for the ability to easily enable/disable applications. And RentDex will let you do just that. During this time, you can still invite specific renters to apply.
3. Most of the times youngsters apply for various rental residence and have to fill their details every time they apply so to avoid this once a prospective tenant pays to file their application with you, they can send applications to any other participating landlord within the next 2 weeks using the same background and credit check from the first application.
4. When a rental property will be listed on RentDex, the list will be automatically syndicated and posted to RentDex. This ensures more people get a chance to look at your property and submit an application.

Target Customers

The primary target of this start-up are the youngsters who are moving to major metropolitan cities for getting career opportunities or to achieve higher education. The information we would need from the customer is their name, date of birth, profession/source of income, phone number, email id(optional) etc.

In the case of the landlord/owner apart from the mentioned details they will also have to upload all the details of the house, including the number of rooms, locality, rent.

Only relevant information will be needed.

Required Knowledge or Expertise

The things that will be required while implementing this start-up are:

1. Research

It will require a lot of research, time and effort to implement this start-up. The most beneficial and economic way would be to ask the people themselves. We could ask them to fill a google form regarding all the necessary details related to the service and then we could look through the data and optimize our model. Through this we can make the website as user friendly as possible.

2. Hardware Required

The hardware required is only a well working desktop/laptop whereas the customers will be able to access our website through desktop/laptop, smartphone, tablet etc.

3. Software

This will require a modest knowledge of programming languages such as:

>Java (for Application Programming Interface (API))

> Python (for Web Development)

> C++ (for implementing Client-Server model)

> HTML (for structuring the website)

It will also require the knowledge of App Development with the help of App Studio and Firebase in order to input the information in the website/app.

Moreover in order to license the app on Google Play store the information of its policies is required as well as we have to know the method to buy a domain for the website.

Solution

The idea and the goal of the start-up can be visualized below for a clear understanding:

For customers

For Landlords

Estimated Budget

For creating the start-up we won’t be requiring any money as it is completely skill driven and does not require any paid resources.

But after creating it, we will be requiring a some amount of money for the following purposes:

>For purchasing domain name: 7500 rupees/year

>For publishing app on Google Play Store: 2000 rupees (One time payment)

>Miscellaneous expenditure: Can vary

Marketing Plan

The way we market our product will be the pivotal factor for the success of our product as the more people are exposed to our product the more they will tend to check it out.

The primary marketing will be done through social media as most people these days are browsing through different social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram rather than sitting in front of a T.V. We will initially advertise the website on our social media handles and create groups on WhatsApp and Telegram as well as spread it through word of mouth. Moreover we would encourage our friends and relatives to do the same.

As we are students studying in colleges we can also ask the different clubs in our college to publish regarding our app in the college magazine. We can also advertise the app on the different fests/functions that take place in our college.

Risk Analysis

There is not a huge risk in implementing this start-up idea as it does not demand a high budget and can be done using only a well working desktop so no extra hardware is required but we would need quite a few landlords to register their apartments for rent before the app is even launched because if there are no landlords that has registered then the app will practically be useless for the customers.

The only thing we will be risking is our time and effort as we are college students so dedicating time to this start-up may hamper our studies.

Milestone & Timeline

The main goal would be to cover the entirety India but it is obviously not possible at the moment so we would first start from Delhi as it is densely populated and also our college is around that area so it would be easier for us to operate on the start-up.

There is not a fixed timeline as the idea is only in a nurturing stage so if we start working on it we would like to give it as much time as possible to make it successful which will require a minimum of 2 years.

Thank you for devoting your precious time for reading this far!!!