Home interiors and renovation platform, Livspace.com is foraying into the Hyderabad market. The start-up has earmarked a sum of Rs 20 crore for its expansion in the city which will be utilised towards infrastructure, brand building and customer acquisition, a top executive told BusinessLine.
To serve Hyderabad, Livspace plans to open a design centre and experience apartments spread across areas such as Jubilee Hills, HITEC city and Gachibowli. The large-format design centre will feature the company’s signature home-in-store experience including assorted designs for all rooms in a home, a dedicated virtual reality zone, over 50,000 materials to choose from and an office space for design-partners.
Livspace already has four design experience centres in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurgaon and Mumbai which account for over 95 per cent of its business.
As part of its pilot in Hyderabad, the company on-boarded 50 design-partners and also completed several projects, the first being a 4,500 sq ft villa located on the outskirts. To fuel growth, Livspace aims to appoint an additional 500 design-partners within the next 12 months, and reach 2-2.5 lakh home owners in Hyderabad.
“We spent the first four years perfecting our business model in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi/NCR. Our expansion into Hyderabad marks the second phase of our growth, which will see us expanding at a much faster rate, in Pune and Chennai and other locations pan India” said Ramakant Sharma, co-founder and COO, Livspace. We are positive that Hyderabad will be a very strong market for us as it is one of the fastest growing cities and people are well versed with global interior trends, he added.
Livspace does 500 home projects a month, of which 45 per cent are full homes and the rest are partial or renovations.
Bengaluru, its most successful city, turned profitable last year where the company executes 230 home projects a month and its average order value is Rs 11- 12 lakh.
“We are on track to exceed our target of achieving $100 million in annualised revenue run rate and will achieve $120 million by the end of FY 2019. Delhi and Mumbai markets will also turn profitable by then” said Sharma.
Founded in December 2014, Livspace has raised a total of $33 million in equity funding and $3 million in debt and is backed by Helion Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jungle Ventures.