Renting A Life

Designer wear, designer bags, furniture or art, rentals afford you a lifestyle you always wanted but couldn’t afford

- Prachi Bhuchar

The tiny room in Delhi’s Okhla area opens out to reveal clothes racks laden with glittering garments. Glittering, because ahead of the festival season, everyone wants to wear their jewels on their sleeves and look their best in designer wear. And if you can do that without worrying about your shifting size and at a fifth of the cost of the outfit, why not? In an adjacent room, a team is hard at work, checking, folding and placing garments that need to be shipped out into black boxes lined with white tissue paper. This is the office of Stage3, an online fashion rental company founded by Sabena Puri, a Harvard Business School graduate, designer Rina Dhaka and entrepreneur Sanchit Baweja in 2016. Here, for as little as Rs 1,500, you can rent a designer outfit, be it by Gauri & Nainika or Sabyasachi, be the toast of the party and slip back into your jeans once the event is done and dusted.

According to a PwC report, the potential for growth in the sharing economy—between the five key sharing sectors (automotive, hospitality, finance, staffing and media streaming)—is huge. Approximately $14 bi llion in revenue was generated in 2013, a figure slated to grow to $335 billion by 2025. With people the world over choosing rental over ownership given the economic climate, the sharing economy has become a natural choice for many. Thanks to many of these novel rental models, different people can use the same products again and again without diminishing their perceived value. While brands like Uber and AirBnB have been pioneers in the sharing economy, the same rationale is now being extended to other high value products like furniture, designer labels, handbags and even art. With an array of apps and mobile sites opening a window to a world of shared goods and services, things that were unaffordable are suddenly up for grabs.

Here are four online services that are changing the way the sharing economy is being experienced today.