Flipkart Forays in Furniture Retail Segment

Home-grown ecommerce marketplace, Flipkart, has announced the launch of furniture products under its home category.

For this, Flipkart has partnered with regional sellers and large format home retailers like HomeTown, Durian, @Home and Homestop across the country to offer varied range. With this, Flipkart’s customer will have access to about 10,000 small and large furniture products on its platform, which will be offered with free shipping and installation.

The furniture listed on Flipkart’s platform is priced between INR 2,000 to INR 1, 50,000. However, the company plans to avail large furniture in only three cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Flipkart is reportedly launching online ticket booking service in partnership with MakeMyTrip.com, and has started testing a programme for its hyperlocal grocery business called ‘f Qck’.

With its entry in furniture vertical, the ecommerce marketplace has come in direct competition with vertical players like UrbanLadder, Fabfurnish and Pepperfry. Also, there are others in the domain that deal in offering customised furniture like Furlenco and Stitchwood. Apart from these, Flipkart will also have to indirectly compete with online classifieds portal OLX and Quikr.

The other players in ecommerce marketplace like Shopclues, Amazon, Paytm, who offer a limited range of furniture, are yet to explore this vertical. On the other side, Snapdeal offers a full range of Bedroom, Living room and kitchen furniture to its customers.

If we look at the statics, Indian furniture retail is valued at being the 14th largest furniture market in the world and is said to be a $10 Bn market expected to see multifold growth. The players in this domain had raised various amount of funding in order to keep pace with changing trends and demands from the sector.

Just few months back, Furlenco raised $6 Mn in Series A from Lightbox, whereas, UrbanLadder grabbed $50 Mn, Stitchwood gathered $750K .

This announcement from Flipkart comes a week after it had raised $700 Mn in new round of funding from its existing investors and others. The company had earlier mentioned that it is bullish at the hyperlocal segment and with these developments around the corners; Flipkart is destined to grab major share of the ecommerce pie in India.

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