Terence Lee · · 2 min readFurniture e-tailer Fabelio bags $2m series A to be fabulous
Fabelio, an online furniture marketplace in Indonesia, has raised a US$2 million series A round in short order, coming just months after a seed round. The company aims to sell high-quality furniture to Indonesians both from suppliers and in-house designers.
“We dream of making every Indonesian home beautiful,” says CEO and co-founder Krishnan Menon. The company says it has served “thousands” of customers and partnered with over 40 manufacturers.
The company isn’t just interested in designing and selling its own wares. It launched a marketplace where furniture and home decor companies can list their products.
Venturra Capital, a new VC firm which has rapidly burst onto the scene, led the round. Existing backers 500 Startups and IMJ Investment Partners also joined.
Krishnan declined to reveal exact numbers to us, but he said that the company has seen a transaction growth of 45 percent month-on-month with “highly positive unit economics, post shipping.”
A Malaysian expansion could come by early 2017, although it’s not a priority yet. In fact, that’s why Fabelio brought on an angel investor from Malaysia. “We will be spending resources to explore the supply scene in Malaysia this year as well as other factors like logistics,” he says.
Singapore is another possible expansion area.
A different rocket
The Rocket Internet aura is strong in this one. Stefan Jung, who heads up Venturra, was the founder and managing director of Rocket Internet Southeast Asia. Krishnan worked for Lazada and Zalora. Christian, meanwhile, worked for Foodpanda.
A bit of history: Rocket actually tried doing an online furniture venture in Southeast Asia, but pulled out before the project even properly got off the ground.
Fabelio feels like a spiritual successor to that. There must be a list of reasons why Fabelio thinks it can succeed where Rocket failed though.
On this, Krishnan says that Rocket failed because it was simply too early for furniture ecommerce in 2012. “As the trends in other markets like India, China and US suggest, vertical ecommerce flourishes after horizontals establish themselves. Ticketing [comes first], then comes fashion, and only then does furniture and home take off.”
He adds that Fabelio’s execution strategy, management style, and investor priorities are different from Rocket, which he believes will lead to his startup’s success.
Update on January 27, 2.30pm Singapore time: Added additional information from the company.
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