Estonian proptech Rendin raises €1.2M seed for its long-term rental platform

Rendin, an Estonian proptech startup that wants to improve the home rental experience, including offering a no-deposit feature, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Tera Ventures, Iron Wolf Capital, Truesight Ventures, Atomico’s Angel Programme, and Startup Wise Guys.

Launched in Estonia in March this year and currently expanding to Poland, Rendin operates a long-term rental platform that promises to smooth out the process between landlords and tenants. Its headline feature is an insurance-backed solution that means no deposit is required from tenants.

The broader premise is that by digitising the rental process and adding an insurance layer, further trust can be generated between parties, therefore increasing occupancy rates.

For landlords, Rendin has created a “letting agreement service” with certain guarantees and has insured those risks via a partnership with ERGO Insurance SE (Munich Re Group). So, for example, if a tenant causes damage or ends up in debt, the property owner is covered. The letting agreement is handled via the startup’s app and platform that plugs into rental marketplaces and real estate CRMs on the backend to provide a fully digital experience.

“We launched publicly in Estonia on March 10th, 2020, two days before the country went into pandemic lockdown,” Rendin co-founder Alain Aun tells me. “It really looked like the world was going to fall apart and a lot of the risks in home renting skyrocketed. We had to reinvent some parts of our product insurance very quickly to adjust to the changes around us.

“Suddenly we had desperate tenants losing their income, expats leaving the country in a hurry, and more. Our learning curve was tremendous. We figured, if we can survive this, we can survive anything. The last eleven months have been constant proof to us that the concept of Rendin can endure”.

Longer term, Rendin is building what Aun describes as “a new standard in home renting”. The first step is to manage the rental process risks to help establish trust between landlords and tenants. This has seen the proptech startup build an “end-to-end value chain,” from contracting, evidence-based handover, preventive insurance flows, loss control, and claim handling.

Aun says Rendin’s insurance product offers landlords more safety than regular deposits, while some risks for tenants are also covered. “The insurance is a tool that helps Rendin to solve real-life, often complicated situations in renting, both for landlords and tenants,” he explains. “Tenants in the Rendin platform don’t have to pay the security deposit, but this is just a feature, not the core product. Trust is the name of the game”.

To generate revenue and cover the insurance costs, Rendin charges a fee of 2.5 percent of the monthly rent. It can be paid by the tenant or by the landlord. “More and more landlords choose to pay the Rendin fee themselves as it helps find new tenants faster,” adds Aun.

On the competition, Rendin isn’t competing with real estate listing sites or letting agencies, and instead can be thought of more as a plugin that can be easily integrated into listing sites and agents’ business processes.

“There are a few no-deposit startups around but their business models, although similar at first glance, are entirely different from ours,” claims the Rendin co-founder. “Most of them are set up to be essentially lending businesses that collect interest from tenants with real estate agencies serving up demand for them, but they don’t really do anything to help mitigate risks for the parties [involved]”.