Flyrobe has a marketplace model wherein consumers can offer their clothes on rent.

Every time a dress is taken on rent, the owner of the product gets a certain percentage of the total rent charged by the company. The bridal rents for Flyrobe range from ₹10,000 to ₹1 lakh for a period of four days. For non-bridals, the pricing starts from as low as ₹1,500. Prospective grooms can get sherwanis on rent for as little as ₹6,000. “All the very expensive designer labels come to us through consumers. In India, earlier, people did not have ways to monetise a second-hand piece of ethnic clothing,” says Saini.

Flyrobe also curates its own in-house labels. Wedding Bells and Wrapd have adopted an inventory model wherein the firms get the products manufactured and designed through their network of vendors.

Wadhera who launched Wrapd thirteen years ago, nudged by her own frustrations at the lack of storage space for heavy pieces of clothes, initially intended to offer only non-bridal clothing on rent but market demand encouraged her to expand the services to cover bridal wear. “In the case of non-bridal wear, people will hardly need to spend beyond ₹10,000. In the next 10 years, rental fashion will be the thing. Somebody is definitely going to be the Abhinav Mishra or Sabyasachi of renting,” says Wadhera. Wrapd is currently present in New Delhi, Jaipur and Hyderabad. “Rentals for our bridal lehengas start from ₹5,000 and can go up to ₹50,000. We primarily cater to people who can afford but do not want to buy,” says Anand.

Covid has been a constraint for some of the rental businesses but with wedding celebrations back with vigour this season, things are looking up. “Demand peaked in November and the business touched pre-Covid levels,” says Saini. The future seems promising. “Rental is going to be big. In Europe, the tuxedo rental market is already bigger than the tuxedo buying market,” says Saini.

Wadhera expects specialised rental shops to take shape in the future. For instance, there could be some shops offering only bridal wear on rent while some others could be catering only to prospective grooms. “There will be a segregation,” says Wadhera.

designer clothes on rent

Borrowed fashion: Indians flaunt rental clothes in weddings