India’s rental sector is shifting from informal to structured, driven by proptech innovations that streamline processes and cater to specialised housing needs such as student, co-living, and senior housing, attracting institutional backing amid growing demand.
India’s rental market is shifting from an informal, broker-heavy process into a more structured business, and proptech is doing much of the heavy lifting. CBRE says rental housing is increasingly being treated as a specialised asset class, with student housing, co-living and senior living emerging as demand-driven segments. In that environment, startups are trying to make renting less opaque, less manual and less stressful for younger Indians who are not ready to buy a home.
The broader industry has grown into a sizeable ecosystem, with more than 400 proptech startups now active in India, especially in Bengaluru, Gurugram and Mumbai. Their products cover everything from listings and interior services to property management and payments. Aurum PropTech says the sector is already fragmented into several distinct business models, with companies such as NestAway, Zolo, Awfis, ADDA and Powerplay showing how different the market can be in practice.
At the centre of the change is a move to automate the most frustrating parts of renting: tenant checks, lease paperwork, maintenance, collections and virtual tours. Rental marketplaces such as NoBroker aim to cut out middlemen, while managed rental platforms standardise homes and services for tenants who value predictability as much as price. ZiffyHomes, founded in Gurugram in 2015, has described its evolution from a managed co-living operator into an AI-driven property management platform for owners and brokers.
The idea is also gaining support from bigger capital providers. HDFC Capital Advisors and Curated Living Solutions have launched what they describe as India’s first large-scale institutional rental housing platform, backed by an initial corpus of ₹1,000 crore. The push comes even as demand for affordable housing remains strong, with housing loan disbursements reaching ₹30 lakh crore in FY2025, underlining how large the wider home market still is.
For landlords, the appeal is lower vacancy, better tenant selection and easier rent collection. For tenants, it is a clearer and more reliable experience. But scaling this model is not simple: local rules, varying landlord expectations and city-specific housing norms mean the winners will likely be the companies that combine software with on-the-ground operations and trust.
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