Omni channel home furniture and décor retailer Urban Ladder has witnessed a 24 per cent surge in average order value, driven by demand for sofas and beds, after the opening of its first large format store here last July.

The five-year-old start-up, that was purely an online player until last year and also lists its products on Flipkart and Amazon, has allocated $3 million to expand its network of large format stores and smaller sofa lounges in Bengaluru and Delhi in FY2019.

“We are adding to our network of four stores in Bengaluru, including three large format stores and one sofa lounge with two sofa lounges in June and two large format stores in the next few months, taking our count to eight stores in the city. We opened a large format store in Gurgaon last week and are opening another large format store in Noida in June,” Ajit Joshi, President & COO, told BusinessLine .

Rival Pepperfry, which is the largest online furniture and home products marketplace in the country, has 30 large format Studios that are experience centres in 16 cities, including four franchise studios in Bengaluru, Indore and Goa, with plans to grow its Studio network to 70 by March 2019.

“Our total addressable yearly market is 2 million new homes with an average spend of $8,000 per new home. The omni-channel strategy has worked very well for us and we will be profitable in fiscal 2020,” said Joshi.

As per RedSeer Consulting, online furniture was a $900-million market in 2017 in India, growing at 29 per cent and is expected to grow at 50 per cent in the calendar year 2018.

“Vertical players like Pepperfry and Urban Ladder account for 30 per cent of online furniture GMV and horizontals like Flipkart and Amazon account for 70 per cent. The omni-channel and integrated solution approach which includes design and execution will better the prospects of online furniture in future,” said Anil Kumar, CEO, RedSeer Consulting.

Urban Ladder reported revenue of ₹106.5 crore for the fiscal ended March 31, 2017, while its total expenses for the same period was ₹267.6 crore, as per data sourced from business intelligence platform, paper.vc. The start-up has raised $103 million to date.

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