Leading etailers in furniture and home decor are sustaining losses, but are optimistic of increasing their Gross Marketing Value (GMV). Co-founder and COO of home decor marketplace Urban Ladder, Rajiv Srivatsa has said that the company is aiming for a GMV of $ 250 million by June 2017.
Urban Ladder has over 5,000 products in its range and nearly 45% of repeat buyers. It launched modular kitchens in August last year. The company is popular among Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities like Pune, Mangalore and Surat. The plan is to expand to other cities like Delhi. Srivatsa has stated that the company’s focus will be on kitchen, interior designing and wardrobes. Srivatsa has also said that the company is ‘well funded for the next few months’.
Urban Ladder has enjoyed fairly good rounds of funding from different sources including Sequoia Capital, Ratan Tata, Venky Harinarayanan and Anand Rajaraman (founders of Junglee) and SAIF Partners and Kalaari Capital.
The company has also witnessed a jump of 30% in its sale. This indicates that Srivatsa is not being over ambitious in his GMV target.
Likewise, Pepperfry is also looking at an upward spike in its graph. The company is aiming at being profitable by the end of this year. An increased demand for its products and a calculated monitoring of the discounts offered looks to be propelling the company closer to profitability.
While explaining how discounts are not relevant in the furniture segment, Ambareesh Murthy, CEO of Pepperfry, says, “On most products listed on our marketplace we start with a 45% gross margin, so even with our discounting, we don’t lose money on any transaction.”
He also says that the company is aiming at selling goods valued at Rs. 1,000 crores by the end of March 2016. Pepperfry has been doing well for itself, so it is likely to meet its target.
Morgan Stanley observes in a report, “Over the next 3-5 years, we are likely to see the vertical specialised websites starting to garner larger numbers. The large general merchandise companies (Flipkart or Amazon) may not gain scale in niche segments such as groceries and furniture unless they go the inorganic route.”
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