Design Cafe Raises Funding From Fireside Ventures, Others

Bengaluru-based online interior design startup Design Cafe has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a round led by Fireside Ventures.

Other participants in the round include existing investor Apurva Salarpuria, angel investor Sidharth Pansari, and Sprout Capital.

Founded in October 2011 by Gita Ramanan and Shezaan Bhojani, Design Cafe is a design and building consultancy. The startup offers online customised design and decor solutions. The company specialises in tailor-made architecture and interior solutions focussed mainly in residential interiors.

Shezaan Bhojani, CEO Design Cafe said, “The interior design industry has largely been offline and disorganised. Middle-class homeowners with houses priced between the range of about $116K (INR 75 Lakh) to $232K (INR 1.5 Cr) have lacked access to designers and innovation in interior decor. We are targeting that segment.”

The company claims to have a 300% growth in revenue over the last 12 months making about $3 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in revenue.

The company is aiming to achieve over $15.4 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in revenue over the next 24 months. Currently Design Cafe has 100 employees, including a technology team, designers and site engineers. With the recently raised funds, the company is looking to expand in Delhi and Mumbai.

In September 2016, Bharat Sethi, founder and CEO of PosterGully, launched iDecorama, a tech platform that offers interior designing. Other startups in the interior design segment apart from Design Cafe include Livspace, Furdo,  Renderlogy etc.

In June 2017, Fireside Ventures had secured backing for its maiden fund from some of India’s top family offices including Wipro promoter Azim Premji’s PremjiInvest, consumer goods maker Marico’s Mariwala, and the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group.

Founded by former Helion Venture Partners Senior Managing Director Kanwaljit Singh in 2014, the Fireside Ventures has already raised $27.9 Mn (INR 180 Cr) to back early-stage startups in the FMCG space. The fund is aiming to raise a total of $46.5 Mn (INR 300 Cr) within six months.

(The development was reported by ET)