Online furniture store Urban Ladder raises $5M in Series A led by SAIF Partners

Bangalore-based Urban Ladder Home Decor Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs online furniture shop Urban Ladder, has raised its Series A round of funding worth $5 million (Rs 35 crore). The investment round was led by SAIF Partners with participation from existing investor Kalaari Capital.

Launched in July 2012 by Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa, Urban Ladder deals across categories like beds, sofas, dining tables, tables and bar units, storage and shelves, seating and accessories (trays, mirrors, laundry basket, etc).

It is one of a few niche players focused on the furniture market. Last year in August it raised $1 million in seed funding from Kalaari Capital which was used for geographical expansion and enhancement of product on the digital front.

"Furniture in India is a huge market with a potential to create a large online business. We believe that Urban Ladder has the promise of breakout growth. We are excited to partner with Ashish and Rajiv in this journey," said Deepak Gaur, managing director, SAIF Partners.

Talking to Techcircle.in, Goel, co-founder and CEO, Urban Ladder, said with this capital the firm's  focus will be in improving quality of customer experience. "Whether it is higher quality delivery infrastructure, loyalty programmes or  front-end or back-end technology, we would be stressing on improving overall customer experience. After that we will invest in brand building and growing our team," Goel said.

On category expansion, Goel said the firm will continue to focus on furniture. The site has been seeing a 10-15 per cent month-on-month growth in terms of orders. He said in March this year the firm did up to 200 orders a day. Average ticket size went up from Rs 10,000 in April this year to Rs 15,000 now.

The site has also recently moved to a curated marketplace model. "We are a highly curated marketplace. We realised that there is a much bigger possibility of bringing larger brands on our platform, which is why we changed our model," Goel said. He said with the growth and traction the firm is seeing, it should be breaking even before the end of this year. "In terms of revenue, we will be crossing $1 million a month mark very soon and in 9-12 months we should cross $2 million a month," Goel said.

In April this year, Urban Ladder's top management had told Techcircle.in that the company is looking to raise Series A funding of $5-6 million to enhance its presence in the market. Urban Ladder is up against players like Pepperfry, which recently raised Series B funding and repositioned to be a pure-play home and living category etailer; FabFurnish, which has piloted an offline store some time ago and Jabong.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)