Curated furniture etailer Urban Ladder bags $50M to expand to 30 Indian cities this year

Indian furniture and home decor etailer Urban Ladder today raised US$50 million in series C funding from Sequoia Capital and TR Capital, along with participation from existing investors Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, and Kalaari Capital.

Two friends from IIM Bangalore, Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa, launched the company in July 2012. Kalaari was the first to invest US$1 million, and SAIF came in later with US$5 million. Hong Kong-based Steadview led the US$21 million series B round last July. And in November, eminent Indian industrialist Ratan Tata made a personal investment in the company.

After establishing its credentials for curated furniture, Urban Ladder is now ready to scale up rapidly in a large Indian market. Hence the large new funding round.

Ashish Goel, CEO and co-founder of Urban Ladder, says:

Over the last three years, we have stayed sharply focused on our design thinking, product quality, and customer experience. While these will continue to be important, geographical expansion will also be a key focus area this year. We will be present in 30 cities by the end of 2015.

Tech innovation has been a key ingredient in Urban Ladder’s secret sauce. Apps help customers configure the features of the furniture they order online, and also get a sense of how it would look in their homes. Goel explained to Tech in Asia about using an app called “Wardrobe Configurator.” “The app will send you a copy of the design you’ve configured, along with the pricing and delivery date. You can modify it further if you want, or go ahead with it if it suits you,” Goel says. His co-founder Srivatsa says augmented reality will be used to enhance the online furniture buying experience further.

Goel and Srivatsa had bought houses next to each other in Bangalore after their MBA from IIM. It was while shopping for furniture for their new homes that they realized just how painful it was to find good furniture at reasonable prices in a market that was so fragmented and unorganized.

Their solution was to find good furniture-makers, and give them product designs suited for the urban middle-class. The online marketplace model gave them the scale for affordable price points. And they had their own teams for quality checks, delivery and installation, to ensure customers felt good and spread the word.

Today, it offers a curated range of over 4000 products across 35 categories in furniture and home décor.

Urban Ladder’s competitors are PepperFry and FabFurnish, which are also trying to make it easier for consumers to buy furniture online instead of having to visit stores. There is also a furniture rental startup Furlenco, which raised series A funding of US$6 million from Lightbox VC just two weeks ago.