Both rental businesses and multi-vendor marketplace businesses operate on low investment. In terms of rental businesses, repurchasing of inventory is rarely required. The business owner generates revenue by renting out the same inventory again and again. The more the owner rents out a product, the more its profit-margin. And in a rental business, the profit margin is ever increasing until the product can no longer be rented out.

On the other hand, multi-vendor marketplaces are already asset-light. They do not require the marketplace owner to own any of the inventory. Different product owners or vendors sign up on the platform instead and rent out their products. While the vendors earn through a rental fee, the marketplace owner earns money through rental commission and many other sources.

Now, in a multi-vendor rental marketplace, the business owner can earn via both rental commission and rental fee. Apart from businesses, normal citizens, especially the environmentally aware younger generation prefers to rent out things and is a potentially huge market in the peer-to-peer (P2P) business model.

Yo!Rent is a rental eCommerce solution that, along with P2P rental marketplaces, can also be used to launch B2B and B2C rental marketplaces. Before moving on to how Yo!Rent can help you launch your rental marketplace business, let’s take a look at some of the popular online rental marketplaces, their business model and revenue streams.

A multi-vendor rental marketplace operates on the following workflow. Note that the following workflow is only for representational purposes and businesses often have to introduce some changes to accommodate the workflow for their business.

• Product owners register on the platform and upload detailed product listings.
• Customers browse the products and place an order with the help of booking calendar.
• To complete the payment, customers also submit a rental security deposit along with the rental fee.
• The rental fee is added to the product owner’s virtual account or e-wallet whereas the rental security is managed by the marketplace owner or admin.
• When the e-wallet reaches the minimum withdrawal threshold amount set by the admin, the product owner can request withdrawal.
• The product owner delivers the product to the customer via the selected delivery/pickup method.
• At return, the product owner inspects the product for any damages.
• In case of damages, the product owner informs the admin who deducts the reimbursement from the rental security and returns the remaining security amount to the customer.
• In case of no damages, the rental security amount is returned to the customer in full.