One of the most unique start-ups on Hyderabad’s technological landscape is fashion portal LibeRent (liberation+rent), which allows you to hire clothes of your choice, instead of buying them. Started just a couple of months ago by Hyderabad-based Sahyujyah Shrinivas, Liberent allows you to be whoever you want for a particular day. “The trend is also moving towards pay-per-use model and sharing economy with the era of ownership coming to an end. Uber and AirBnB revolutionised two of the lifestyle segments and I believe next in line is fashion. Hence was born LibeRent, since hiring gives you the freedom of choice and the freedom to be whoever you want,” shares Sahyujyah, who is the founder and CEO of LibeRent.
“Particularly women hate to repeat clothes and we get bored of our clothes soon. It doesn’t make much financial sense to buy clothes that we are only going to wear once or twice. it’s not good return on investment , not to mention the additional expenses on maintaining the clothes. With renting, you can just wear anything you want at just 10-15% of the retail price, never repeat a dress and be free of all the maintenance hassles. You also get to try out every designer and design,” she explains.
How it works
When you open the site www.liberent.com, on the landing page you can click on the rent now button and go to the product listings page. On the landing page, they have clearly explained how to choose an outfit, delivery date, and how hygiene is maintained.
“Once you come to the products listing page, you can choose the date you want it on and give your measurements, bust waist and hip so we can do custom fitting to ensure it looks perfect on you. We will show you the clothes available on the date selected in your size. You choose what you want, rent it, give your details and make the payment like any other site. We will come and deliver the dress one day before the booked date and come take it back the day after the booked date. It straight goes to organic laundry from there. We have dresses, gowns, Anarkali suits and lehengas,” informs Sahyujyah.
LibeRent have also launched ‘Rent Through Us’, where women can put up their clothes, handbags, accessories etc, that they are too bored to repeat, on rent through us and earn a cut every time their stuff gets rented. They can choose this amount to go to their bank accounts or to charity in their name.
“For this all you have to do is, come to our site, choose rent through us from the main menu and give your details and upload few pictures of the stuff you wan to rent. We will call or mail, schedule an appointment and come inspect your stuff and put up pictures on our site. Every week your cut on the revenue will be credited in your account,” reveals the 22-year-old entrepreneur.
Sahyujyah, who hails from Madurai in Tamil Nadu, pursued metallurgical engineering and quit her job as an operations manager with Tata Steel to start Liberent.“Nine months back when I started, I started by speaking with a lot of women, both online and offline, taking surveys and found everyone was visibly excited about the idea. Then I started doing through Facebook ( www.facebook.com/liberent) in Chennai. We launched in Hyderabad on June 11th, a month and half back with around 800 sign-ups,” she explains.
Speaking about the market they are operating in, she says, “We are presently only doing for women and focusing on events, from clubbing, birthday parties, dates to weddings, Sangeet, music launches etc. We are only in Hyderabad as of now. Soon we will launch a subscription model for work wear and subscription for bags and accessories and we will also go pan India soon.”
As far as investments are concerned, Sahyujyah says she’s just done a “friends family fools” round so far and is looking to raise an angel round and is in talks with investors.
“Well in start-ups its never about the profits, it’s about growth and that’s our focus now. We are working on increasing the conversion rates on our site,” she adds, determinedly.