HomeLane appoints CBO Choudhry as co-founder, COO

Interior design solutions provider HomeLane on Monday said it has promoted chief business officer Tanuj Choudhry as its co-founder and chief operating officer.

Choudhry takes over the role from co-founder Prabhu Venkatesh, who worked at the Bengaluru-based startup from 2014 to 2018. The currently vacant CBO position is yet to be filled, co-founder and CEO Srikanth Iyer, told TechCircle.

In his new role, Choudhry will manage the Homevista Decor and Furnishings-owned startup’s overall business operations and drive the company’s long term growth strategy, a company statement, citing Iyer’s internal email to employees, said.

The company’s current co-founding team consists of Choudhry and Iyer, as past co-founders Venkatesh, Rama Harinath and Vivek MP have moved on from the company, Iyer told TechCircle.

As per his LinkedIn profile, Choudhry was the founder and CEO of CIIE.Co-backed SkillKindle, an online marketplace for courses and experiences. Live across the National Capital Region, Mumbai and Bengaluru in India, and Johannesburg and Singapore abroad, the 2011-founded startup with over 4,000 experts and 2,25,000 users wound up operations in 2014.

A former management consultant at McKinsey & Co, and senior product manager at Amazon, INSEAD alumnus Choudhry joined HomeLane as its vice president of growth in 2015.

He led the Sequoia-backed startup’s franchise model and design partner programme to help scale its operations in an asset-light manner, as per the statement. In 2016, he was elevated to the CBO position, where he was responsible for marketing and sales, last mile delivery and category verticals.

“Our revenues have grown five-fold in the last four years and he (Choudhry) deserves most of the credit for that. As we double-down on profitability without losing sight of growth, Tanuj's experience as a leader and organization builder will be critical,” Iyer said.

The company’s immediate growth strategy plans, in a path to profitability, include breaking even by the financial year ended March 2021, it said last month.

Having raised its most recent investment in an equity and debt funding round of about $8 million, HomeLane said it posted Rs 230.4 crore (about $31.4 million as per current exchange rate) in operating revenues for the financial year ended March 2020, a 131% jump from a year ago. “The company is on track to reach EBITDA breakeven by April 2021,” it said, without disclosing further details.

The 2014-founded company has raised about $54 million in funding so far.

Currently operational in 10 cities, it has planned to expand to the top 25 markets by the end of the calendar year 2021. It has over 15,000 customers across the country.

HomeLane is one among many heavily funded startups in the online home decor space in India. It competes with home decor solutions startup Livspace. IKEA-backed Livspace recently raised $90 million in a growth funding round to expand its existing market and supply chain capabilities, apart from creating new market offerings and private labels for the Asia Pacific region.