Reliance Retail acquires Indian online furniture retailer Urban Ladder in $24m deal

Reliance Industries Limited‘s (RIL) retail unit Reliance Retail has acquired a roughly 96% holding in local online furniture retailer Urban Ladder for 1.82 billion rupees (US$24.4 million).

From left: Urban Ladder co-founders Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivasta / Photo credit: Hindu Business Line

According to a November 14 BSE India filing, as part of the deal, Reliance Retail still has the option of taking its shareholding in the Bengaluru-based company to 100%.

The RIL subsidiary also proposed to make an additional US$10 million investment into the company, which is expected to be completed by December 2023. Reliance said the acquisition will help it expand its digital and new commerce initiatives and widen its consumer product offerings.

Founded in 2012, Urban Ladder has over 1,000 products and 25 categories on its platform, including living, bedroom, dining, and study room pieces. According to the filing, Urban Ladder’s audited turnover for FY2019 was 4.34 billion rupees (US$58.3 million) while its net profit for last year stood at 494.1 million rupees (U$6.6 million).

To date, Urban Ladder has raised nearly US$115 million from investors such as Trifecta Capital, Elevation Capital, Kalaari Capital, and Sequoia Capital India.

Reliance Retail’s acquisition comes after a string of investments into the company that was announced over the last couple of months, starting with the US$1 billion injection from US-based investor Silver Lake.

See Also: Amazon vs. Reliance Retail: First shots fired in the Indian ecommerce battle

The latest – and currently biggest – investment into Reliance Retail came earlier in November after the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia committed to pouring US$1.3 billion into the RIL arm.