Dubizzle Group invests in Takeem to strengthen UAE rentals

Published: 2026-07-08T11:26:32.000Z

Dubizzle Group has made another move to own more of the rental journey, taking a strategic stake in the UAE proptech startup Takeem and making its Bayut and dubizzle portals the exclusive home for the company's rent guarantee product. The investment, channeled through the group's early-stage arm Dubizzle Group Ventures, adds a landlord-protection layer to a portfolio that already reaches an enormous share of the country, with the group's platforms drawing tens of millions of monthly users. In plain terms, the region's dominant property marketplace is buying its way deeper into the machinery of renting rather than simply listing the homes. Takeem's pitch addresses one of the rental market's oldest headaches, which is the risk that a tenant simply stops paying. Its Rental Guarantee, billed as the first of its kind in the GCC, shields landlords against non-payment, throws in emergency maintenance cover for urgent repairs, and lets rent be collected through monthly digital direct debits rather than the stack of post-dated cheques that has long defined leasing in the Emirates. Underpinning all of it is a proprietary database of rental data the company uses to price risk. Founded only in 2023 by Rakesh Mavath and Pooja Vithlani, Takeem has scaled quickly to more than 100,000 units and reports a steep jump in onboarding over the past couple of months. The deal reads more clearly when placed next to Dubizzle's recent investment in Tern, a rental payments and rewards platform that lets tenants pay by card and collect points. Where Tern sweetens the experience for renters, Takeem reassures the other side of the table by taking default risk off the landlord's shoulders, so together they let the group sit across both ends of the transaction. That is the strategic logic driving the whole exercise, since classifieds giants across the Gulf are steadily morphing into full-stack platforms that monetize everything after the listing, from payments and loyalty to tenant management, rather than leaving that value to others. The regional backdrop makes the timing sensible. Rents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi have climbed sharply through a prolonged property upcycle, sharpening the friction between landlords chasing secure income and tenants wanting flexibility, exactly the gap these tools try to close. The UAE is also mid-shift from a cheque-and-transfer culture towards digital rent collection, encouraged by frameworks like Ejari and Dubai's regulatory push for a more transparent market. Against rivals such as Property Finder, Dubizzle is betting that embedding financial services into its marketplaces creates a stickier ecosystem, and its appetite for corporate venture deals mirrors a wider GCC trend of large platforms locking in advantage through investment rather than building every piece themselves. For a market this active, owning the rails of renting looks like the prize.