Property management platform Crib acquires rent financing company CirclePe

Crib, AI-powered property management platform for co-living spaces, hostels, and PGs has acquired CirclePe, a rent financing company that lets tenants rent without a security deposit and pays operators their rent in advance.

The combination brings embedded finance directly into the rental lifecycle where tenants pay no upfront deposit, and operators receive their rent and deposit gap financed upfront, freeing working capital to grow.

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CirclePe was founded by Navan Jaiswal and Ankur Yadav. In May 2024, the company raised close to Rs 7.5 crore in its pre-seed funding round at a valuation of around Rs 35 crore.

The round was led by OTP Ventures, with participation from 1947 Rise, iSeed, IIT Delhi, Venture Catalysts, and founders and CXOs from OfBusiness, BharatPe, Uni Cards, OYO, and other leading companies.

“Deposits are the most broken part of renting in India. Tenants lock up cash they can’t use, and operators wait on money that’s already theirs. We built Crib to run the rails for co-living, and CirclePe fixes how money moves on top of them. Bringing them together means a tenant can move in with zero deposit and an operator can get paid upfront, on the same platform,” said Sunny Garg, Co-Founder and CEO of Crib.

Rental housing is one of the largest untapped opportunities for embedded finance in India. Tenants routinely lock up months of savings in security deposits, while operators wait on month-by-month collections to fund expansion. CirclePe closes that gap by partnering with NBFCs to finance the deposit or rent commitment, disbursing upfront to the operator while the tenant repays in smaller monthly amounts.

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Crib already powers the complete rental journey for more than 2,500 operators managing over a billion dollars in rent — inventory, agreements, onboarding, invoicing, collections, renewals, and move-outs.

“We started CirclePe because the deposit is a tax on moving. Tenants lose access to their own money. Joining Crib gives us the one thing a financing product needs most: scale and trust with operators who are already running their rent on the platform. Now a tenant can skip the deposit entirely and an operator gets paid upfront, on day one, on a platform they already use,” said Ankur Yadav, Co-Founder of CirclePe.