When Ashish Shah left a career in the corporate world to start a company, entrepreneurship was not a long-held ambition. The turning point came while working at eBay Motors, where he helped build what became a $100-million business and one of the largest automobile transaction marketplaces. The experience of building something from the ground up convinced him that creating a business around an unmet customer need could be far more rewarding than managing an established one. “I had not set out to prove that I could build something at scale from scratch, but I did. That changed everything,” Shah recalls.
That conviction eventually led Shah and his close friend, the late Ambareesh Murty, to Pepperfry, one of the earliest online furniture and home marketplace companies. Founded in 2011 and launched in early 2012, Pepperfry set out to organise a highly fragmented furniture market by connecting consumers with manufacturers and artisans while taking responsibility for quality, delivery and customer experience. At a time when electronics and books had begun moving online,
furniture remained largely an offline purchase because consumers were reluctant to buy bulky, expensive products without seeing them first. That trust gap became the company’s opportunity.
The founders spent months studying how people bought furniture before launching the platform. They spoke to buyers, visited manufacturing clusters and met artisans across furniture hubs such as Jodhpur and Saharanpur. What stood out was not a lack of manufacturing capability but the absence of an organised domestic distribution network. Much of the country’s high-quality furniture was being exported because selling across the country remained difficult. “India produced great furniture, but very little of it was sold domestically because distribution was the real challenge,” Shah says. Rather than simply creating another online marketplace, the founders decided to build the supply chain required to support one.
Pepperfry initially launched as a broader lifestyle marketplace spanning categories such as fashion, beauty and home products. Within a year, however, the founders realised that leadership would require sharper focus. By 2013, the company had exited other categories to concentrate entirely on furniture and home decor, where it believed technology, logistics and standardisation could create a lasting competitive advantage.
The early years demanded constant improvisation. Shah and Murty funded the company from their own savings until the cash began running out. Finding investors turned out to be only one part of the challenge. The founders concluded that customer trust could not improve unless they controlled deliveries themselves. That led to the creation of Pepcart, Pepperfry’s in-house large-format logistics network. Today, the company operates more than 100 trucks and has brought product damage rates below 2%, turning logistics into a core business.
The company also navigated multiple external shocks, from demonetisation and the rollout of GST to the Covid-19 pandemic. On at least three occasions, the business ran dangerously short
of cash. Shah says surviving those periods required discipline rather than optimism. “We knew pioneering would never be easy. We were not trying to build the Indian version of another global company. We wanted to build Pepperfry on its own terms.”
That emphasis on discipline is now reflected in the company’s operating model. Pepperfry delivers
furniture across more than 300 cities and has increasingly shifted to a franchise-owned, franchise-operated (FOFO) format, allowing it to expand physical retail with lower capital investment. Unlike many digital-first consumer brands that continue to struggle with offline expansion, around 60% of Pepperfry’s revenue now comes from its network of about 120 company-owned and franchise stores, giving customers the option to experience products before completing purchases.
The financial profile has also begun to change. Pepperfry reported operating revenue of `163 crore in FY25 and posted its first quarterly profit in 14 years during the fourth quarter of FY26. According to Shah, the turnaround came through “ruthless prioritisation, business optimisation and frugality” rather than aggressive expansion. The company’s evolution also attracted strategic interest. In December 2025, Pune-based listed technology group TCC Concept acquired a 95.18% stake in Pepperfry through a `659.44-crore share-swap transaction, marking a new ownership chapter for the business.
Yet the defining moment in Pepperfry’s journey had little to do with markets or finance. In August 2023, Murty died unexpectedly, leaving Shah to take over as CEO while steering both the company and its employees through an emotional transition. Shah says his focus since then has been to preserve the foundation the two founders built together while making the organisation leaner and more efficient.