Urban Ladder to hire 1,400 more this year

Online furniture vendor Urban Ladder will add 1,400 employees to its workforcethis year to beef up its rapid expansion plan. The Bengaluru-based company's current headcount is 600 across seven cities.

The company is also planning to expand its presence to 25 more cities, including Coimbatore, Mysore, Kolkata and Vizag, by 2015-end and to add more product lines and categories to its existing portfolio.

Urban Ladder had recently introduced a wide range of furniture for infants and children.

“We are a young company and hence we will be in an expansion mode in the next 12 months. We will have about 2,000 employees by the end of 2015. We are also expanding our design team as we want to focus on design and quality,” said Rajiv Srivatsa, co-founder, Urban Ladder.

The company had recently “acqui-hired” a team of city-based BuynBrag as it looks to expand the home decor range.

With this, Srivatsa said the requirement is to get a large space in a bid to accommodate all the employees.

The company has already leased a 10,000-sq-ft office space in Bengaluru and plans to move into the larger office by March. It is currently operating from a 6,000-sq-ft office.

However, the company is not in any urgent need to raise more funds as it is re-investing the turnover back into the business, he said.

“We have raised a good amount and the plan is to make money on every transaction. We expect to do that in another 24 months. However, by the end of this fiscal, we will reach our target of ₹350 crore turnover and double that by December 2015,” Srivatsa said, adding demand for buying furniture online is growing not only because of convenience, but also about getting right products at reasonable prices.

Urban Ladder focuses on creating multi-functional furniture for buyers in cities, for whom space is always a constraint. “Lot of investment and technology is going behind this and no offline player can provide the quality and designs that we are providing.”

The company is also investing in robots to handle materials and furniture in the warehouses and ensuring a smooth and damage-free delivery.

Started in 2011 by Srivatva and co-founder Ashish Goel, Urban Ladder has raised over $27 million in three rounds from four investors – Kalaari Capital, Saif Partners, Steadview Capital and Indo-US Venture Partners.

It has recently received an undisclosed amount of private investment from Tata Son’s former chairman Ratan Tata, who also has invested in Snapdeal and jewellery portal Bluestone.

Srivatsa said though buying furniture online is an urban phenomenon, smaller cities are also getting tech-savvy due to increased usage of mobile internet on smartphones.

Urban Ladder gets 100 to 200 orders a day with an average ticket size of ₹20,000. With more cities added, the number is likely to go up to 800 a day.

“We will continue to focus on the furniture category and grow as market leaders in the segment. "We want to focus only on furniture,” Srivatsa added.

The company competes with other furniture portals such as FabFurnish and PepperFry.com and larger marketplaces like Snapdeal. India’s largest ecommerce player Flipkart is expected to launch a furniture category soon.

The Indian home and furnishing market, which is largely unorganised, is currently pegged at $20 billion and is likely to reach $30 billion in two years and by then online is expected to command a 15 per cent market share.

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