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Bangalore-based home design and decor startup LivSpace has roped in prominent angel investor, Gokul Rajaram as its Special Advisor. With this, Gokul Rajaram has also invested an undisclosed amount in the company in his personal capacity.
In his role as Special Advisor, Gokul will work with Livspace advising on product and technology strategy across mobile, web, and emerging platforms. Besides, he will provide guidance in areas like overall business and investment strategy. It is to be noted that Livspace had recently launched its mobile app and is getting over 50% traffic from it.
Gokul Rajaram, who is a consummate product and technology stalwart said, “For early stage companies, the caliber of the team is the single biggest factor correlated with success. What stood out for me about the founding team of Livspace is their ability to create a compelling long-term vision, to hire the best talent, and to build a remarkable and differentiated first product that will soon become a ‘need’ for a loyal and passionate set of early customers. In addition, Livspace is addressing a huge market opportunity; making it an awesome company to be advising and investing in.”
Gokul Rajaram has been a top tier business leader both in the early and growth stage for fast paced internet businesses. He is presently Product Engineering Lead at leading payments and small business solutions company, Square and has invested in healthcare information, access and delivery platform, Lybrate. Gokul’s 30 years of experience includes his tenure in Google AdSense as Product Management Director, leading Ads Product team at Facebook and co founding NLP/summarization technology platform used by publishers called Chai Labs.
Anuj Srivastava, CEO and Co-founder of Livspace said, “We are thrilled to have Gokul come on board as an advisor. He is a rare combination of top class product and business acumen. Given his deep experience running large and disruptive technology businesses at Google, Facebook, Square, etc., his inputs will make a huge difference, as we scale Livspace rapidly. We will seek his guidance across the board – product and technology strategy, hiring top talent, and business guidance”.
Founded in 2014 by former Google and Myntra executives, Anuj Srivastava, Shagufta Anurag and Ramakant Sharma, LivSpace is an end-to-end home design and décor platform for homeowners and designers. The platform allows users to design, decorate and furnish their homes through a catalogue and then helps them buy the combined sets.
The startup has selected curated designers and an in-house design team. LivSpace also has a designed modularised furniture, which can use 100 SKUs to produce 5,000 products.
Livspace has raised $4.6 Mn in Series A round of funding led by Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jungle Ventures and has acquired two startups viz curated online network of interior designers, Dwll.in and dynamic design community and marketplace for design professionals, DezignUp recently. The startup competes with players like Pepperfry, Urban Ladder, Homelane and FabFurnish in its domain.
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