Online marketplace for personalised home interior & decor Livspace raises $4.6M from Helion, Bessemer, others

Bangalore-based Home Interior Designs E-commerce Pvt Ltd, the startup behind Livspace, an online marketplace for personalised home interior design and décor, has received $4.6 million in its Series A round of funding, co-led by Helion Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. The round also saw participations from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, among others.

The funds will be used to develop new products, innovative technology and generate demand for its products, in addition to bolstering its management team to focus on the $25 billion home design and decor market in India and South East Asia.

As part of the deal, Rahul Chowdhri, partner of Helion, and Aakash Goel, VP of Bessemer India, will join Livspace board.

The startup was founded in 2012 by Anuj Srivastava, Shagufta Anurag, and Ramakant Sharma. Srivastava is an IIT Kanpur graduate, who earlier headed product marketing for many e-commerce and online advertising products in Silicon Valley. Anurag, an architect, earlier founded Space Matrix, a corporate interior design company. Sharma is an IIT Kanpur graduate and was previously VP (engineering) at Myntra.com.

Livspace claims that it enables homeowners to discover thousands of pre-created looks for all rooms, kitchen, and storage areas in their homes at the click of a button. Customers can select and purchase these looks, which are created by international designers, and personalise them (by material, colour, style) online. The startup will then deliver the items at the customers' doorsteps.

Livspace has partnered with many real-estate developers in the country and also offers a 'find your apartment' feature to offer pre-created, ready-to-install interior design for customers who buy homes from these developers.

LivSpace is currently focused on the top cities of India, including Bangalore, Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai. It also plans to launch in other cities in India and other large markets like Singapore.

"Our focus is to make beautiful interior design part of everyday living for our customers and delight them with a highly personalised online and pleasant last-mile experience," said Srivastava, who is also CEO of the firm.

"Home design and furnishing is largely serviced by mom-n-pop shops today. The pain point at the consumer end is high in terms of unreliability, delays, and cost overruns. In Livspace, we found a team which is well placed to solve this problem," said Chowdhri of Helion.

"Livspace is pioneering a unique approach where consumers can access thousands of looks created online for their home interiors at the click of a button. We are very excited to partner with Livspace in this journey of building a world-class consumer focused home design and furniture marketplace out of South Asia," said Aakash Goel, vice president of Bessemer India.

"Jungle has always been a strong supporter of startups from Asia that are building disruptive global models and we see Livspace as first of many full stack e-commerce companies that will start here and go global," said Amit Anand, co-founder and MD of Jungle Ventures.