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Hi readers,
I see a lot of aspirational content about building houses on social media. The designs are appealing and contemporary, with many offering trendy minimalist concepts.
Apart from showcasing house designs, these posts also usually provide recommendations for fancy or beautiful furniture.
However, furniture can be too expensive or it can be hard to find exactly what we need in the market. That’s where furniture startups with innovative business models come in.
In Indonesia, Monoliving offers modular furniture, which refers to premade units that can be combined or customized in different ways. With Monoliving’s services, consumers can put together furniture to suit their preferences.
Another Indonesian player in this space is Bioma, which provides furniture rental services for businesses. Renting furniture can be a solution for companies that want to be asset-light, especially those implementing hybrid working.
The emergence of these startups benefits consumers by giving them more choices and alternatives to owning furniture. But on the flip side, can these new approaches create a path to profitability for startups in the long term?
— Jofie Yordan, journalist at Tech in Asia
Top stories this week
Image credit: Timmy Loen
1️. Furniture startups remodel Indonesia’s billion-dollar market with customization, rental options
Firms like Bioma and Monoliving are setting themselves apart from players like Dekoruma through their innovative business models.
2. As funding drops, will Indonesian startups turn to IPOs instead?
Funding deals in the country dropped by over 50% year on year in H1 2023 while total investments raised plummeted by over 70%.
3. A watch list of tech investors caught in the US-China trade war
Following Sequoia Capital’s spinoff of its China business last month, here’s a list of US- and Europe-based investors who have stakes in China.
4. ShopBack product lead: The one mistake senior hires must avoid at a new job
In this talk, Isaac Tay shares some of the mistakes he made while growing the cashback platform’s product team and what he’s learned from them.
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