HomeLane, an online home interiors brand, has shut down the marketplace of Capricoast.com which it had acquired for Rs 90 crore in November this year. Tanuj Choudhary, chief business officer, HomeLane, said: “Post its acquisition, brand Capricoast is entirely absorbed by HomeLane.com. The entire team of Capricoast is now a part of HomeLane”. The Bengaluru-based company is among the start-ups that were acquired and shut down, a trend that has been growing of late in the emerging e-commerce sector. Cab aggregator Ola closed TaxiForSure after acquiring it. Snapdeal and Flipkart closed Exclusively and Letsbuy, respectively, after their acquisitions. Capricoast’s team of 120 employees are now part of the HomeLane brand. Jawad Ayaz, founder of Capricoast, has joined HomeLane board. Choudhary said, “The Capricoast team brings with it a powerful technology back-end that will further strengthen our product offering and go a long way in making HomeLane.com the preferred home décor destination for customers across India. This acquisition also marks the beginning of HomeLane’s next phase of growth and expansion. Owing to this acquisition, we have now expanded to the Delhi-NCR region as well.”
HomeLane recently raised $10 million (approximately Rs 64.3 crore) in a round led by Accel Partners, along with participation from other investors such as Sequoia Capital and RB Investments. The start-up said it will use the funds to expand its growth and technology innovation and strengthen operations in existing markets. As per Crunchbase, Homelane earlier raised about $50 million from Sequoia Capital. HomeLane sells design modules for kitchen spaces, bedrooms, and other furniture sets like wardrobes, study tables and storage units. Homelane is present in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and the NCR cities. It was founded in 2014 by Srikanth Iyer and Rama Harinath and competes with the likes of Pepperfry and Livspace.
