·       CirclePe was valued at ₹35 crore during its funding round in May 2024, when it successfully raised ₹7.5 crore from OTP Ventures and group of prominent angel investors and entrepreneurs.

Gurugram, July 1, 2026 — Crib App (“Crib”), the AI-powered property management platform for co-living spaces, hostels, and PGs, today announced it 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: tenants pay no upfront deposit, and operators receive their rent and deposit gap financed upfront, freeing working capital to grow.

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

The acquisition of CirclePe by Crib brings both products together under one roof.

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.

What makes this more than a feature is where it sits. 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. That gives Crib three layers most fintech products never get to own: the distribution layer, the operational data layer, and the technical infrastructure. Rather than building a disconnected external journey, Crib can embed financing natively into the platform operators already run their business on.

It also creates a data advantage that compounds over time. Crib sees real payment behavior, move-out history, occupancy trends, and property performance — the kind of signals that build a proprietary underwriting and trust layer traditional lenders and standalone fintechs simply don’t have access to.

Commenting on the acquisition Mr. Sunny Garg, Co-Founder and CEO of Crib said, “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.”

Mr. Ankur Yadav, Co-Founder of CirclePe said, “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.”

What changes for tenants? 

A security deposit is usually the biggest cheque a tenant writes when moving in, and it sits idle for the length of the stay. With CirclePe, tenants on participating properties can move in with zero deposit and instead pay a small monthly amount on top of their rent. No large upfront cheque, no waiting at move-out to get the deposit back.

What changes for operators? 

For co-living and PG operators, acquiring and furnishing buildings, plus slow rent cycles, tie up working capital that could be funding new beds and new properties. CirclePe pays operators their rent upfront and finances the deposit gap, so operators get predictable cash in hand instead of money stuck across hundreds of tenant accounts. That is capital they can put back into growth. The combined entity has already rolled out this product across multiple operators, including Housr, Blossom Stayz, Kots World, and Livstations.

AI is no longer emerging, it is getting firmly embedded across industries, reshaping economies, and redefining how businesses operate. The Indian AI market, estimated at around USD 10 billion, is however at a nascent stage and holds tremendous potential to transform economic sectors including real estate. In fact, AI is set to redefine the future of Indian real estate across every stage of the property lifecycle, starting from design & planning to sales & facility management services.

Design phases will increasingly rely on hyper realistic AI driven simulations, generative 3D models, and predictive cost engines that reduce errors and project bottlenecks. In the planning phase, AI will enhance efficiencies through project scheduling, resource allocation, and real time monitoring to prevent delays. Construction sites will operate like interconnected ecosystems where AI guided drones, vision based safety systems and predictive analytics will continuously monitor progress, anticipate risks and self optimize workflows. Within sales, customized property discovery, curated market insights, automated valuations, immersive virtual tours, and predictive investment modelling will transform real estate transactions. Property management will evolve with heightened adoption of smart environments powered by sensor networks, adaptive lighting, intelligent access systems and AI driven assistants that proactively respond to usage patterns. Overall, PropTech and AI are poised to significantly transform Indian real estate over the course of next few decades, ushering in transparency, efficiency and future-readiness.