Guess where online furniture shopping is most popular?

In the ecommerce rat-race, Bangalore has managed to capture maximum consumer eyeballs in the online furniture shopping segment. The country’s IT capital contributes most amongst furniture e-tailers, to the unorganized $18 billion furniture market.

A robust real estate market, coupled with a tech-savvy population, has led to the increase in online furniture sales.

FabFurnish

Bangalore contributes to 21% of FabFurnish’s revenue, higher than consumer led markets like Mumbai and NCR.

“Furniture as a category is most popular among Bangalore customers, the reason being the city has a huge number of modern dwellings. Only 3% of Bangalore’s population lives in slums, as compared to 60% in Mumbai and around 18.7% in Delhi,” says Vikram Chopra, founder and CEO of Fabfurnish.com.

“With men contributing 51.5% of Bangalore’s revenue, it explains why recliners are one of the most popular products shopped for,” Chopra adds.

Urban Ladder

Bangalore contributes to 30% of Urban Ladder’s revenue and is its biggest market.

Urban Ladder is among the top three sofa sellers in Bangalore with sales of almost 100 units per month, considering even established physical shops like Home Center and HomeTown. When it launched its sofa range of Rs 45,000-85,000 last year, everyone was of the opinion that they are crazy.

“There are a couple of factors that favour Bangalore – the internet penetration in the city and a very large tech-savvy audience,” says Ashish Goel, co-founder, Urban Ladder.

Why is online furniture shopping popular in Bangalore?

Pearson India ex-CEO Srikanth Iyer, who recently co-founded HomeLane, a startup focused on providing home set-up solutions, says: “In terms of willingness to shop online, even for big-ticket purchases like furniture, Bangaloreans are on top.”

Bangalore is an end-user market, unlike Mumbai and NCR, which are investor-led markets. Hence, people who purchase homes in Bangalore move into them when they are ready and start scouting for furniture to set them up.

Being an IT-centric city, there is a large young transient population in Bangalore who are more comfortable shopping online.