Furniture rental startup Furlenco gets debt funding from BlackSoil Capital

Online furniture rental startup Furlenco, which is run by Bengaluru-based Kieraya Furnishing Solutions Pvt. Ltd, has raised Rs 20 crore ($2.7 million) in funding from venture debt and alternative credit platform BlackSoil Capital.

Furlenco designs furniture in-house. The company, which was launched in 2012 by Ajith Mohan Karimpana, claims to have furnished over 150,000 homes across 8 major cities in India till date.

“The subscription model proved to be robust during the Covid period,” said Ankur Bansal, co-founder of BlackSoil.

In April last year, Furlenco raised $10 million in a mix of equity and debt led by venture capital firm Lightbox.

In September 2018, VCCircle exclusively reported that Furlenco had raised its Series C round of funding led by UAE-based venture capital fund Crescent Enterprises Ventures.

In 2015, Furlenco said it raised $6 million (Rs 38 crore then) in a Series A round from Lightbox alone. In 2016, it raised $15 million (Rs 100 crore) in a Series B round led by Lightbox.

That year, the company raised $15 million in debt. Then, in late 2017, Furlenco raised Rs 7.7 crore ($1.2 million) in debt funding from Bollywood actor Aamir Khan and four other persons.

It is one of the furniture rental startups to have raised money in recent times. For example, in November 2019, Bengaluru and San Francisco-based CasaOne raised $16 million (Rs 114.96 crore) in a Series B round that was led by Accel.

In May 2019, VCCircle reported that online rental marketplace RentoMojo had raised fresh funding from one of India’s most active angel investors. Previously that year, Accel also participated in the company’s Series C round.

BlackSoil

It recently invested Rs 10 crore in Oliva, a chain of dermatology-focused clinics, marking its first bet from the new fund.

The firm provides debt to private equity and venture capital-backed companies. It says it has completed over 45 deals and disbursed around Rs 450 crore in the past four years. 

Blacksoil’s past deals include OYO, Spinny, Purplle, Zetwerks, Vogo and TVF.