Inc42 Daily Brief
Stay Ahead With Daily News & Analysis on India’s Tech & Startup Economy
Bengaluru-based online home decor portal Livspace has raised about $15 Mn (INR 100 Cr) in its third funding round led by existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners. Singapore-based Jungle Ventures and Helion Ventures also participated in this round.
The company will use the funding for expansion in new cities and expansion on the design automation platform across designers. It will also be used to set up new Livspace design studios with VR technology, strengthen the catalogue depth, launch new modular products, and further optimise the backend technology.
Speaking on the investment, Amit Anand, Founding and Managing Partner, Jungle Ventures, said, “Anuj and Ramakant are top tier entrepreneurs who’ve created a truly pioneering idea out of India. It’s truly extensible across many cities across the world as the problem they’re solving is unique, pertinent, and fragmented the world over. I have only seen them go from strength-to-strength and create an enviable team, a customer experience, and scale not seen before in the industry.”
Livspace was founded in 2014 by Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma. It is an end-to-end home design and decor service provider and curated marketplace for homeowners and designers. It lets customers discover thousands of interior designs by colour, material and style.
It uses design, data science technology, and catalogues to create looks that help homeowners visualise their homes before making an online purchase.
Livspace will expand to Mumbai, Noida, and Gurugram by end of this year and Pune, Hyderabad in the first half of 2017. It will also invest in technology to streamline hundreds of contract manufacturers, modular furniture companies, home design services, decor marketplace, etc. and bring them under one platform. This will create supply side scale, creating huge benefits for customers.
In July 2016, Livspace launched its ‘Home Design Automation Platform’. This will allow the startup to automate complete design workflow, generate invoices through ecommerce integration and provides online 2D and 3D designs.
Since inception, it has raised $27.6 Mn. In September 2015, Livspace had raised $8 Mn in an internal round of funding led by Helion Ventures, Jungle Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Earlier, it had also raised an undisclosed amount from Gokul Rajaram, who joined the startup as its Special Advisor. Its major acquisitions include YoFloor, a mobile platform that offers a virtual trial for home design decisions, design professionals community and marketplace startups DezignUp and Dwll.in.
Prior to this in March 2016, online interior home decor and furnishing company, MyGubbi.com raised $2.5 Mn in seed funding from angel investors led by Vipul Parekh, co-founder of Big Basket; Ananda Kallugadde, co-founder of NeoBytes; and Rajesh K Murthy, EVP of Infosys. Other startups in this segment include Housify, UrbanLadder, PepperFry, Furdo, FabFurnish, etc.
Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.