Close on the heels of securing an investment from Tata Group chairman emeritus Ratan Tata, Bengaluru-based online furniture store Urban Ladder on Friday said it has acqui-hired Gurgaon-based furniture and home decor marketplace BuynBrag. The company did not disclose details of the deal.
As part of the acquisition, meant to ramp up Urban Ladder’s home décor business, key team members of BuynBrag including co-founder Prithvi Raj Tejavath will join Urban Ladder. Tejavath will take charge as VP-Home décor. Having raised $20 million in a Series C funding from Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners and Kalaari Capital in July, Urban Ladder aims to become the largest furniture company in the next six months and the largest in the home décor space in the next 12 months.
“This essentially means Rs 250-crore revenue by March and Rs 500 crore by September,” COO and co-founder Rajiv Srivatsa had told FE earlier.
“Over the last two years, we have been able to do very interesting work in the furniture space. While we will continue to provide our customers with best-in-class furniture, we feel now is the right time to add a wider home décor range to our catalog,” CEO and co-founder Ashish Goel said on the BuynBrag acquisition.
Both Urban Ladder and BuynBrag started out in 2012. The latter was launched by Tejavath, who had earlier worked with Diageo and Coca Cola and Ayush Jain, a former KPMG executive. Urban Ladder, on its part, offers over 1,000 products across 25 categories in furniture such as wardrobes, beds, sofas, dining tables and coffee table. It plans to further expand the product range and service 25-30 cities in India by March 2015.
According to industry estimates, the furniture retail industry in India is pegged at $20 billion, about 70% of it being unorganised.
Interestingly, all the foremost furniture e-tailers in India — Urban Ladder, Fabfurnish and Pepperfry — were launched in 2012.