iSeed

Rocketlane was the first investment from my fund, making this moment particularly special. Congrats Srikrishnan Ganesan on this milestone! ?? https://lnkd.in/geGnZscp

I’ve rented 3 homes in the last 5 years. I’ve always been lucky - the deposit has never been more than 3 months rent, I’ve never had a problem recovering my deposit. But, I’ve heard dozens of horror stories from friends, co-workers & others: 6-9 months of rent as deposit, idiotic reasons given for deductions during deposit refund & much more… In India, most of my friends got financial help from their parents to pay the deposit for their 1st rental house. Almost all of my friends who rent continue to complain about deposits. ?? When I stayed in the UK (pre-2020), all of my friends used a product called “Fronted” which provided a 0-deposit facility to move into rental accommodation… When I came back to India, I always wondered why such a product didn’t exist (**) 4 years later, Ankur Yadav said hi to me at an event in Gurgaon. In the 1st conversation itself - he & his co-founder Navan Jaiswal came across as the right people to solve the deposit problem for tenants in India. This week, Ankur & Navan’s company CirclePe announced its $1M Pre-Seed round led by OTP Ventures with participation from Utsav Somani's iSeed fund, Shiva;s 1947 Rise Fund and Arjun Vaidya (all three close friends!). ??CirclePe allows credit worth tenants in India to move into any home of their choice with a zero-deposit credit facility (provided the landlord agrees). If you see their Instagram page, they are already advertising such homes in NCR & have major B2B partnerships aligned. This is a product which India needs & I’m glad to be a small investor in CirclePe; wishing the team the very best ?? Call to action: Please check the comments for their open roles + my detailed investment memo + disclaimer ??

Always good to collaborate with Suhail Sameer! Let's go Navan Jaiswal, Ankur Yadav ?? https://lnkd.in/gqUW9pVA