Crib buys CirclePe to embed zero-deposit renting in its property management stack

Crib is property-management software for co-living spaces, hostels and PG accommodations: occupancy, payments, residents, agreements, invoicing, collections, renewals and move-outs.

CirclePe had raised $1.5m to date from investors including IIT Delhi, OTP Venture Partners and Venture Catalysts; Crib's acquisition price was not disclosed.

Sunny Garg, Shaifali Jain and Archit Chauhan founded Crib in 2021 as end-to-end management software for co-living, hostel and PG operators. Navan Jaiswal and Ankur Yadav founded CirclePe in 2024 as a rent-financing platform letting tenants rent without a security deposit, funding the commitment through NBFC partners.

The acquisition stitched financing into Crib's software: tenants moving into Crib-managed properties can pay deposits in monthly instalments, CirclePe pays operators rent and deposit upfront, and Crib plans to use CirclePe's user-aggregated data to sharpen its own underwriting across 2,500 operators.

CirclePe became part of Crib's platform: zero-deposit renting and upfront operator financing became native features, and Crib inherited CirclePe's NBFC partnerships and underwriting data. Deal terms were undisclosed.

Crib already held operators' occupancy and payment data, so underwriting embedded in the platform was structurally cheaper than for standalone financing apps.

Six-plus-month deposits were a proven consumer pain point; removing them widens the tenant funnel for every operator on Crib.

Operators receive rent and deposits upfront — working capital that makes Crib stickier on the supply side against NoBroker, RentOk and ManagR.

CirclePe, a 2024-launched startup with $1.5m raised, gained distribution across 2,500 operators that it could not have built alone against rivals Flent and RentenPe.

The buyer kept the NBFC structure intact rather than becoming a lender, keeping the balance-sheet risk with partners while owning the data and the customer.

In embedded finance, distribution and data beat standalone products: a SaaS platform holding the transaction data can absorb a fintech and turn financing into a feature instead of a rival company.

As of the 1 July 2026 report, the acquisition price was undisclosed and integration was the plan of record: push CirclePe's financing across Crib's 2,500 claimed operators, front deposits and rent through NBFC partners, and fold CirclePe's user data into Crib's underwriting. India's property-management market remained led by NoBroker, with rental financing contested by Flent and RentenPe.