Indian landlords run real businesses on paper registers, group chats, and trust. We think they deserve software that respects all three — and replaces none of the human warmth.
In 2023, our co-founder Aarav was helping his father — a retired bank manager who runs three PGs in Pune — settle the books for the year. Eight WhatsApp groups. Two registers. One Excel sheet that crashed. Three days of arguing with tenants and staff over who paid what, when, how.
He looked for software. Property-management apps for the West cost $200/month and ignored cash. Indian rental apps were ad-laden listing portals. Nothing felt like a ledger — calm, complete, careful.
So we built Rentgate. Mobile-first, because every PG owner runs the business from their phone. OTP-verified cash, because cash isn't going away. UPI reconciliation, because Indian banking is its own quiet miracle. And in the spirit of the bahi-khata — every entry signed, every total in Indian-grouped rupees, every page accountable.
"Software for India should feel like a well-kept ledger —— Aarav Joshi, co-founder
patient, precise, and a little bit beautiful."
India runs on cash. Our cash flows are designed first; everything else follows. No "premium feature" gating, no lectures about going digital.
No notifications begging for attention. No dark patterns. No upsells when you log in. The app should feel like sitting down with a fresh chai.
Export to CSV any time. No data ransom. No "downgrade and lose your history". DPDP-compliant, and proud of it.
Every screen tested on a ₹8,000 phone over 3G, with a staff member who's never used an app before. If it doesn't work there, it doesn't ship.
Aarav and his father spend three days reconciling tenant payments. The idea is born over filter coffee in Indiranagar.
A weekend hackathon ships a single screen — cash collection with OTP — to one PG in Pune. It works. The owner cries (happily).
Priya joins as CTO from Razorpay. Karan joins as design lead. We close pre-seed from Blume and a handful of PG owners.
50 PG owners across Pune, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. ₹2.4Cr tracked in the first month. The cash-OTP flow ships.
Bank statement parsing for ICICI, HDFC, SBI, Kotak, and YES. End-of-day UPI reconciliation goes live for all owners.
We're here. Hindi UI in development. Tenant complaint flows shipping next month. And we still answer the WhatsApp ourselves.
Half of us grew up renting. A quarter of us have parents who run rentals. We are not abstracted from this problem.
30-day pilot, free migration, English or Hindi onboarding call.