We're excited to announce our investment in Forent, a new ecommerce platform for the rental market in the Philippines. Forent operates a mobile app where people looking to rent items, equipment, or services can easily find trusted rental options in one central place.

The first use case they are focused on is rentals related to events, such as family celebrations, small corporate events, community gatherings, or friends weekends. The list of necessary supplies for even a relatively minor event can stretch surprisingly long - tables and chairs, plates and silverware, a speaker system, a bbq and, of course, a karaoke machine. Today, people have to ask friends and family for tips, post in group chats or, ultimately, search around Facebook for a decent option. Seeing thousands of posts for rental requests and listings on Facebook Marketplace gives us lots of confidence that there is huge demand in this space, and it also makes clear how much opportunity there is for a more secure and seamless dedicated rentals platform.

As Jayvee told us in our first conversation, one of the most common comments on Facebook rental posts is "Pa legit check po.” There is a lot of concern about whether the rented item is working, will arrive on time, will be priced fairly, and whether the parties involved will be easy to work with. It's been amazing to see how big and liquid Facebook Marketplace has become in the Philippines but, as a "generalist" experience, it lacks the specific functionality needed for a great user experience for many use cases. Similar to the startup meme where many companies started by targeting particular sectors from the Craigslist listings website, we see a similar opportunity in the Philippines for startups to target specific categories of the Facebook Marketplace, and the rental economy is a particularly huge opportunity.

Forent is focused on tackling this challenge and they have recently launched their Forent mobile app with hundreds of active listings and rental transactions already occurring successfully. They have an exciting roadmap of features to enable a great rental user experience like reviews, 'verified' status, rental-specific payment options, discovery tools, and much more.

The founder and CEO Jayvee De Leon comes to Forent with a strong business background as a successful sales manager for BDO and AXA Insurance in the Philippines. Impressively, he wanted to leave the comforts of corporate life and build his own company and he saw a big opportunity in the rental sector. He's brought together a talented team of software engineers to build the Forent app and we are very excited to support Jayvee and Forent in their mission to build the #1 destination for rentals in the Philippines. They are strategically starting in the event rentals category but ultimately the technology and rental marketplace features they are building can apply across many rental sectors.

If you have any upcoming rental needs in Metro Manila, or if you have events-related assets you would like to offer for rentals, check out Forent! You can download their app on Google Play and the Apple App Store.