Dubizzle Group has taken a strategic stake in Takeem, a UAE rent-guarantee startup, and made its Bayut and dubizzle portals the exclusive route to Takeem’s Rental Guarantee, a product that covers landlords against tenant non-payment. Neither company disclosed the size of the investment or the commercial terms of the exclusivity deal.
The tie-up lands in a rental market where landlord risk is rising. Takeem’s own data, reported by AGBI, recorded a 125% increase in rental defaults over the past year and a 300% rise in late payments across the roughly 90,000 Dubai units it monitors. Much of the strain reflects short-term liquidity rather than insolvency, the company said, as job losses and pay cuts feed through to tenants. The pressure has built since bouncing a rent cheque was decriminalised in January 2022 under Federal Decree-Law No. 14 of 2020, which removed a criminal deterrent that landlords had long leaned on.
What the deal covers
Under the exclusivity arrangement, Bayut and dubizzle become the sole property portals offering the Rental Guarantee, embedding the cover into the rental search and leasing flow rather than leaving it as a separate add-on. The product protects landlords against non-payment, includes emergency maintenance cover, and enables monthly digital direct debit rent payments. Dubizzle Group described it as the first product of its kind in the GCC.
Haider Ali Khan, chief executive of Dubizzle Group UAE, said Takeem was “solving one of the most important gaps in the rental journey”, and that the deal fit the group’s aim to make property transactions “more trusted, more transparent and more dependable for everyone involved”.
A fast-growing but young product
Takeem was founded in 2023 by Rakesh Mavath and Pooja Vithlani and launched its rent guarantee in April 2026, billing it as the UAE’s first. The company said it has now onboarded more than 100,000 units, up from the 55,000 it reported in February, and that client onboarding grew 900% over the past two months, a rate measured against a product only months old. It underpins its underwriting with a proprietary database of rental data.
The startup is not new to institutional backing: in February it raised an undisclosed sum from Second Century Ventures, the venture arm of the US National Association of Realtors, through its REACH Middle East programme.
Mavath said the Dubizzle partnership “puts rent protection where the entire market already is” and “turns a product into infrastructure”, giving landlords and agents “a structured way to take default risk off the table” for the first time.
Second rental bet in two months
The investment was made through Dubizzle Group Ventures, the group’s early-stage arm, which backs founders building around its marketplaces in the GCC. It follows the group’s June stake in Tern, a UAE rental-rewards platform that lets tenants pay rent by card and earn points, and which has processed more than $40 million in annualised rent volumes. Terms of that deal were also undisclosed.
The two investments point to a pattern: Dubizzle is pairing landlord protection with tenant payment and rewards, and taking exclusive distribution rights in each case, turning Bayut and dubizzle from listings portals into a layer of rental services. Whether landlords adopt paid default cover at the scale that bet requires is the open question the exclusivity is designed to answer.
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