Armed with the single brand retail licence, online furniture and home décor brand, Urban Ladder is all set to close fiscal 2018 with 10 retail stores, all of them in its home ground, Bengaluru, a top executive told BusinessLine .

The company has allocated $12-15 million for its offline retail expansion over the next 18 months. In addition to the launch of its flagship 7,500 sq ft retail store and a 750 sq ft sofa lounge over the last six months, Urban Ladder opened its third offline format spread across 5,500 sq ft on Friday in its home city, Bengaluru.

“We will have five large format stores ranging from 5,000 – 7,000 sq ft and five small format stores like our sofa lounges in areas where there are new homes coming up and in mature localities, by March 2018. This is because, we want to cater to two kinds of customers – those who want to do up their new homes and those who want to replace their existing furniture for new styles” said Ajit Joshi, President and COO, Urban Ladder.

After consolidating our position in the Bengaluru market, we will decide on our expansion to other cities including Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, in the first quarter of calendar year 2018” added Joshi. Asked how its flagship store is performing, he said “We are getting 250 – 300 families every weekend on Saturdays and Sundays, and 100 people on average every day, from Monday to Friday.”

Urban Ladder is studying customer in-store behaviour to identify buying patterns and preferences and has also set up a Virtual Reality Zone in its flagship store to help customers choose products and see how they actually look in living rooms, bedrooms etc, before they finally buy it.

The company aims to leverage its omni-channel presence to become profitable in the next 18-20 months and has set its sights on achieving 60 per cent YoY growth. Asked to comment on media reports that Urban Ladder was in talks to sell out to Flipkart, Joshi said, it was pure speculation and it was not on the cards.

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