Pepperfry homes in on the online furniture traffic

Online furniture and home-products marketplace Pepperfry has emerged a dominant furniture brand in the country, capturing 62 per cent of the total online traffic related to furniture and home, with its nearest competitor Urban Ladder trailing at 24 per cent.

According to data from digital market intelligence firm SimilarWeb, Pepperfry attracted 28 million visitors to its site in the second half of calendar year 2016 (July-December); Urban Ladder attracted 11 million visitors during the same period. The rest of the 6 million searches in the segment during the same period are split among other players such as RentoMojo, Livspace, Furlenco and HomeLane.

The past 12 months have witnessed a massive churn in the online furniture and home-products market with the first signs of consolidation setting in when Rocket Internet’s FabFurnish.com, the number three contender in the space at that time, was acquired by Future Group in April 2016. Then, Mebelkart.com, which showed signs of entering the top-four league, had to bow out of the race last August as its parent company AskMe.com shut shop.

With FabFurnish most likely to be shut down very soon, Pepperfry is the number one furniture and home-products e-tailer. Its future growth prospects are backed by a Series E fund raise of ₹210 crore last September and ₹40 crore raised in venture debt from InnoVen Capital earlier this month, amounting to a total fund raise of $164 million, compared with Urban Ladder’s $92 million.

“We surpassed ₹1,000 crore in revenue run-rate last March and are on track to achieve ₹3,000 crore by March 2018 and break even in the business,” Ashish Shah, founder and COO, Pepperfry, told BusinessLine .

He said the company’s investments in seven in-house brands, starting with Mudramark in 2014 has paid off, as they now contribute to 55 per cent of the furniture business and 45 per cent to the overall business. “Our investments in setting up 17 experience studios across top metros have paid off big time, as 25 per cent of our sales accrues from customers who have visited the Studios. Customers cannot be categorised as online or offline customers, because online and offline are just a choice of channels for customers. We want to be present wherever our customers choose to be.”

Having served 4.5 million customers to date, Shah aspires to create beautiful homes for 20 million customers by 2020 and become India’s number one furniture seller across all channels in the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, Urban Ladder, which has listed its products on Amazon and Flipkart to boost sales, is also exploring the offline route with plans to set up 10 offline brand-experience stores in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. It is awaiting approval from the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion for a single-brand retail licence.

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