Home Interiors Ecommerce Marketplace YOUKRAFT Secures $10 Mn Funding For Pan India Expansion

Home interiors and construction ecommerce marketplace YOUKRAFT has secured $10 Mn in seed funding from the Goel Family Office including Manav Goel, founder and CEO of YOUKRAFT. While the YOUKRAFT app, that will cater to the construction and interiors industry, will be released in Bengaluru first, Goel expects it to become a pan-India brand by end of 2022 or early 2023.

 “We are delighted to have secured the funds we need to support YOUKRAFT during this crucial early stage of our growth. We seek to bridge the gaps in India’s interior and construction industry by providing a unified technology platform where homeowners, interior designers and contractors can easily obtain the best products at the best prices delivered to their doorstep,” Goel said.

 YOUKRAFT started with the idea to address the key logistical and transparency issues plaguing the interiors and construction industry. It was designed as a single unified platform that would connect homeowners, contractors, designers, architects, technicians, and other stakeholders in the industry. 

 According to a statement by the startup, the technology was designed and developed in-house in four months. The technology is based on an advanced AI/ML algorithm that matches customers to the most appropriate product recommendations. The platform also claims to have listed 20k+ SKUs offered by more than 100 leading brands across key verticals. 

 “Our ML engine has been designed to use large amounts of publicly available price data across millions of products to create an insightful pricing engine that offers tailored recommendations based on user buying patterns, while suggesting ways to save on future purchases. We do this by creating customised discount offers, group buying, bulk discounting on their most bought products and showing them other products of similar quality but at a lower cost,” Goel added.

 He is also of the view that with the increasing urbanisation of Tier- 2 and 3 cities, the demand for quality homes and commercial spaces is on the rise. The startup wants to tap into that to unify the market and take the hassle out of the homeowning experience, he mentioned.

 India’s construction industry is expected to become the third-largest globally by 2025 and grow by 7.1% each year, according to Invest India. With the growth of the industry, many startups in the sector have raised funds from investors. 

 Last year, construction materials marketplace Infra.market entered the unicorn club, after raising $100 Mn in a Series C funding round led by Tiger Global. Later in the year, construction management app Powerplay announced $5.2 Mn in funding led by Accel Partners and Sequoia Capital India’s Surge.