Crib Acquires CirclePe, Ends Co-Living Security Deposits

Crib, a property management platform built for co-living spaces, hostels, and paying guest accommodation, has acquired rent financing company CirclePe. The deal lets Crib fold embedded finance directly into its software — meaning tenants can move in without paying a large security deposit, while operators still get paid upfront.

It’s a small acquisition on paper, but it targets a problem almost every renter in India has felt: the deposit trap.

The Problem This Acquisition Actually Solves

Security deposits in India’s rental market are typically two to ten months’ rent, locked up with no return until move-out — often with disputes along the way. That cash sits idle for tenants and gets delayed for operators too, since deposits and rent aren’t always collected cleanly upfront.

CirclePe, founded by Navan Jaiswal and Ankur Yadav, was built specifically to break that cycle. It partners with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) to finance a tenant’s rent or deposit commitment, paying the property operator the full amount upfront while the tenant repays it in monthly instalments. With Crib now owning that financing layer, it can plug it directly into the rental workflow operators already use.

How Zero-Deposit Renting Will Work on Crib

Crib’s core software already handles the operational backbone for co-living operators — inventory, agreements, onboarding, invoicing, collections, renewals, and move-outs. Layering CirclePe’s financing on top means:

Tenants can move in without paying a large upfront deposit
Operators receive rent and deposit-linked financing in advance, on day one of the tenancy
Both sides transact within the same platform, instead of juggling a separate financing app

This is the classic embedded finance playbook — take a financial product that used to be a separate transaction and stitch it into software people are already using daily.

What the Founders Are Saying

Sunny Garg, co-founder and CEO of Crib, framed the acquisition as solving both sides of a broken transaction:

“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. That’s the future of renting we want to build.”

Ankur Yadav, co-founder of CirclePe, echoed that framing from the financing side:

“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.”

The Numbers Behind the Deal

Crib works with more than 2,500 operators managing over $1 billion in rent — the exact distribution CirclePe needed to scale its financing product without having to sell operators on a new platform from scratch.

CirclePe itself had raised nearly ₹7.5 crore in a pre-seed round in May 2024, at a valuation of about ₹35 crore, led by OTP Ventures with participation from 1947 Rise, iSeed, IIT Delhi, and Venture Catalysts, among others. Neither company disclosed the value of this acquisition.

Why This Matters for India’s Co-Living Market

Co-living and managed accommodation have grown fast in India, but the deposit-heavy, cash-locked rental model hasn’t really changed to match. Crib’s move suggests the next competitive edge in proptech won’t just be inventory management software — it’ll be who controls the money movement layer sitting on top of it. The sector’s investor appetite backs that up: proptech platforms like Square Yards, which recently closed a ₹900 crore pre-IPO round, show real estate-adjacent startups are attracting serious late-stage capital, not just early bets.

For operators already running rent collections through Crib, this acquisition is close to a zero-effort upgrade: same platform, added financing, faster cash inflow.

For tenants, it’s a more direct pitch — skip the deposit, keep the cash, repay in instalments instead.

The Bottom Line

Crib’s acquisition of CirclePe isn’t a headline-grabbing mega-deal, but it’s a sharp, focused move: fix the one part of renting tenants hate most, using a company that had already built the NBFC relationships to do it. If zero-deposit renting scales across Crib’s 2,500+ operator network, it could quietly reset how deposits work across India’s co-living sector.

Want to track how embedded finance is reshaping Indian proptech? Keep following KnowStartup for the next move in this space — acquisitions like this tend to come in waves.

Author

Sachin

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages...