Urban Ladder appoints Avinash Shekhar as its CFO

Bangalore-based Urban Ladder Home Decor Solutions Pvt Ltd, which runs online furniture shop UrbanLadder.com has appointed Avinash Shekhar as its chief financial officer (CFO). Shekhar had assumed the responsibility as the CFO of the company effective August 1, 2014. He will report to Ashish Goel, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO), Urban Ladder.

"I am happy to have Shekhar on board. His experience in the retail industry will play a critical role in helping Urban Ladder focus on growth and maintaining leadership in the online furniture space," said Goel.

Shekhar is a chartered accountant with over 15 years of experience in finance with luxury and semi-luxury brands. Prior to Urban Ladder, he was the finance director at Inditex Trent India Pvt Ltd (the company behind the clothing and accessories brand Zara). Before that, he was the director- finance at Salvatore Ferragamo India.

He had earlier also worked at companies like Pantaloon Retail India Ltd, Bharti Airtel Ltd, and J C Bhalla & Co. Shekhar holds a B.Com (Hons) in accounting and finance from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College - University of Delhi.

Launched in July 2012 by Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa (COO), 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). Urban Ladder claims that it offers over 1,000 products across 25 categories. As of now, the company is present in eight cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi/NCR, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.

According to Srivatsa, the company does 100-200 transactions per day, and the average ticket size is closer to Rs 20,000. In terms of revenues, it has been seeing 4-5x growth year-on-year.

Last month, the company had secured Rs 120 crore ($20 million) in Series B round of funding led by Steadview Capital, with participation from existing investors, including SAIF Partners and Kalaari Capital. The funds will be used to grow its presence in the Indian furniture market. The firm also plans to expand the product range and service to 25-30 cities in India by March 2015.

Prior to that, it had raised $5 million led by SAIF Partners in November 2013, and $1 million from Kalaari Capital in August 2012.

Urban Ladder is mainly competing with Fabfurnish.com and Pepperfry.com, besides other horizontal e-commerce players such as Flipkart.com, Snapdeal.com and Amazon.in.

In May this year, online home products marketplace venture Pepperfry.com raised Rs 95 crore ($16 million) in funding led by Bertelsmann India Investments, the strategic investment arm of the international media company Bertelsmann in India, with participation from existing investor Norwest Venture Partners.