Livspace is a design, eCommerce, content, and community platform for homeowners and home designers. The startup pioneers in the space and is an Indian online end-to-end home design company.
The customer experience: 1. With Livspace, customers can discover thousands of interior design looks for all types of rooms, personalize — by color, material, style — to their liking, and get the exact look for all the rooms — living, dining, bed, kitchens, wardrobes, and storage areas — in their homes, in a matter of weeks.
2. Once the look is selected, the underlying furniture products, decor items, and services like false ceiling, wood flooring, wallpaper, etc. are delivered to the owner's home within a few weeks and, then, installed by the Livspace team who makes the home look like the picture selected by the customer on the website.
The company was founded in December 2014 by Anuj Srivastava, Ramakant Sharma and Shagufta Anurag.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Anuj Srivastava, CEO and Co-founder, Livspace And Spoke To Him
About LivspaceAs a technology and design first team, we employ a combination of data science, algorithms, and design principles to create unique experiences for homeowners and scale the job of interior designers.
The founding team at Livspace combines world class talent and entrepreneurial experience gathered at companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Flipkart, Adobe, Myntra, Zynga, and Ola. Well funded and having raised over $12M in capital, our investors include top global venture firms like Bessemer, Helion, and Jungle.
How was it started? The idea of Livspace was inspired by our combined frustrations in India, USA, and Singapore while getting our home designed and realizing that instead of it being a fun, enjoyable experience — it’s a nightmare. I had an apartment in San Francisco and while I used Houzz to find a designer it literally took me 9 months and lots of misery to get my home designed.
Ramakant was here in India, had spent countless months with carpenters, designers — who’re not very well-trained, and visits to stores to finally get his kitchen and home design done.
Shagufta, while at Space Matrix, had worked with thousands of apartments through property builders and realized that this is a complicated problem and needs a smooth addressal.
I also saw the advent of version one e-tailers like One King’s Lane in the US and then an inspiring idea like Houzz. We collectively thought if we can create an end-to-end experience where homeowners can discover thousands of great quality design, personalize the design to their liking, and then make their homes look like the look or the home design in weeks, it will be fun. We loved the idea, ran into RK (Ramakant) who is a technical genius, Shagu (Shagufta) is my sister-in-law besides being a design genius and a great entrepreneur, and, given my experience building great internet products, we came together to put together possibly the world’s best team to solve this complicated problem of making homes everywhere look beautiful using the internet.
About Co-foundersAnuj Srivastava, CEO and Co-founder - Formerly, Anuj worked at the Google Mountain View headquarters, where he led WorldWide Product Marketing for the eCommerce and Mobile Payments team. In the past, he led worldwide product marketing function for Google Local/Maps and multi-billion dollar online ad products including AdSense and Google Display Network. Anuj started his tech and internet career in Silicon Valley where he worked as the Head of Product Marketing at Encentuate, an identity and access management company, which was acquired by IBM. He did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and MBA from the London Business School. Anuj is an active angel investor and has invested and lived in San Francisco, London, New York City, and Singapore.
Ramakant Sharma, Director & Co-founder - Ramakant was a core team member and the first VP of engineering & CTO at Myntra.com, leading fashion and lifestyle e-commerce company in India, which was acquired by Flipkart.com. He also co-founded Indusdiva.com. He possesses an experience of close to 12 years in general management, entrepreneurship, software product development, and online marketing. Prior to joining Myntra, Ramakant was heading online gaming platform zapak.com. He did his B.Tech from IIT Kanpur and MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad.
Shagufta Anurag - is the Chief Design Evangelist and the co-founder of Livspace. Her philosophy, which permeates Livspace’s approach to design, is to capture the needs and culture of the consumer and translate them through innovative design into a functional, productive and creative living environment. After completing her Architecture and Design education Shagufta founded Space Matrix in 2001, which today is one of the largest design practices in Asia-Pacific and has won several International Design Awards. It also made it to Interior Design magazine's list of 2011 Top 100 Giants - one of only two companies from Asia to receive the accolade.
Unique key feature/services For the first time in India, Livspace brings a unique internet approach to home design where you can find everything you need for end-to-end home design online as opposed to traditional model of running after carpenters and contractors.
1. End-to-end Home Design Experience | Personalized and Hassle-free - Livspace is making home design simple again. A homeowner in India can now simply :
a. Choose a look for their home online at Livspace.com
b. Personalize colors, materials, furniture to their liking (or get in touch with a Livspace designer for consultation - which we never charge for!)
c. Place an order and then sit back and relax (and maybe plan a housewarming party!)
d. Receive Delivery as the installation is completely taken care of by Livspace trained professionals.
Photo-realistic Looks | Your home exactly like the picture - By introducing thousands of designer created photo-realistic looks that resemble your home, Livspace lets you experience your home interiors even before they become a reality. Effortlessly, now a homeowner can finally make their home look exactly like the picture they’ve seen online. And since the looks are created by designers from across the world, a home in New Delhi or Mumbai, can now emulate a home in New York or Milan.
Ready-to-live Home in 8 weeks - Designing a home in India is usually a process that takes 6-8 months to complete. Ask anyone who has undertaken the mammoth task, and they’d agree. From placement of order to last-mile installation, Livspace has slashed down the time to just 8 weeks, as opposed to 6-8 months
Find your apartment - At Livspace you can find your apartment and browse through pre-created looks that are designed especially for your home and layout. For instance if you are a resident of Mantri Esplana, then you can simply visit livspace.com and find interior designs already created for your layout.
We are adding more and more apartments to our collection, and this feature can be as revolutionary to home design, as the advent of ready-to-wear was for fashion industry — only the pre-designed Livspace looks can still be personalized.
How is it different from existing ones? The positioning of Livspace, is essentially very different from other players in the market. From the very onset, we at Livspace have been clear about our market position as India’s first and only end-to-end home design experience and curated marketplace for homeowners and designers. It essentially translates to treating “looks or spaces” as a complete product as opposed to single pieces of furniture and decor items. This solves a big problem for the Indian consumer, looking to transform their complete house into a beautiful home, as opposed to just one corner, or replacing just a couch or a curtain. The consumer today has a strong consumer appetite for a high-quality, personalized, and predictable experience in the home design & decor market segment, and Livspace is their one-stop solution.
Funding status Our investors include top venture firms — Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jungle Ventures. We have risen $12.6M in capital over two rounds.
Monetization model
Livspace provides an end-to-end home design experience and is like “your personal home designer” online but — unlike traditional designers — do not charge for the look, the design service, or the last mile installation process. With Livspace, you only pay for the home products including the furniture, services, and accessories that you buy. Everything else is FREE. So you get double advantage — a fast, pleasant, world class home design experience which actually comes to you at an affordable price.
Traction details a. Hundreds of full home design, kitchen & wardrobe customers in Bangalore and Delhi and close to a thousand rooms designed online
b. Tens of thousands of users/traffic on the website
c. India’s top and most active Facebook channel: ~600K highly active engaged users (10X of comparables in India, 4X of Houzz.com)
d. Built industry’s best team for solving a large, unique problem for the first time in the industry
e. Raised funding from top, world-class investors in a heavily oversubscribed round.
Future plans Our vision really is to make Livspace one of the most innovative internet and technology company to come out of India and be a true technology and design innovator. Livspace has the opportunity to be the world’s largest home design brand online and we are confident of creating a billion dollar company in the space.
We have, already, been able to combine an incredible online and offline experience for our consumers. And, hence, so far it has been very inspiring and motivating.
Over the next two years we will: 1. Grow across the top cities in India. You’ll see us set offices across the country in months to come and we’ll announce our plans in more details once we get there.
2. We’re excited to work very closely with our channel partners and this would include developers, designer marketplaces like Dwll.in, DezignUp and others, and small studios to expand massively.
3. We’re hiring top talent across the board and the key functions include engineering, designers, data scientists, and go-to-market professionals to manage our explosive growth.
4. Cover more than all builder homes using the “find your apartment” feature across the top cities in India: Unlike the more traditional internet companies in India, we’re using technology, data science, and clever experiential tactics to drive demand. One growth tactic is to build further on our “find your apartment” feature where you can select your apartment by layout and then discover designs customized for your apartment. Our consumers love it that they can see designs created for their apartments before they buy it.
5. Create a unique mobile-first experience for the industry: Over 50% of our traffic comes from the phone and we’re committed to launching a truly mobile-first experience for the industry.
6. Create a library of online tools that can be used by interior designers to rapidly create a design, personalize it, and then service the customer. This will truly revolutionise home design for both designers and homeowners.
7. Revolutionizing the home design catalog by working with the world’s best supplier base and bringing world class products and services to the India consumer and never before prices.
Marketing plans We do not engage in any marketing as we have a very active social community engagement. Our social and community engagement which is 10 times more than any other comparable company in India: We now have a community of over half a million homeowners, growing at 50-100% MoM — which is faster than most companies in India. The engagement rate with our content is 200% more than Houzz.com – the leader in the US - and 10 times over comparables in India which is truly game changing.
Challenges faced While building our model and determining our growth strategies, we have concentrated on solving four biggest challenges of the industry — hitherto unresolved.
1. India’s move to experiential commerce and the advent of the “discover online and experience offline “world. For a high-involvement purchase like home design Livspace, hence, combines the best and smoothest experience both online and offline. The response is positive as the Indian market is now ready for ideas like ours — the online consumer is now looking to not only buy books and t-shirts online but also looking to buy home design and even homes online.
2. Home design has traditionally been a fragmented industry and has required homeowners to coordinate with several vendors and face unreliable timelines. Livspace, in contrast, is a one-stop solution to home design, which has been made possible with a cutting-edge technological thinking, innovations on catalogue and supply chain level, all combined with eCommerce principles and integration.
3. In any home design project, the main challenge faced by the homeowner is to be able to clearly visualize the home design and associated products, share with friends and family in an immersive environment on the web and phone, and communicate his/her decisions regarding space planning, personalization & overall design. Livspace already offers a picture-to-reality experience, completed in just a matter of weeks, consequently taking the guesswork out of home design. Furthermore, the VR and productivity tools that are being developed at Livspace, will address this challenge in its entirety.
4. In addition, traditional catalog e-tailers and eCommerce players in the furniture industry cannot solve the full home design problem because their catalogs and backend systems are not geared to cater to the packaged, customizable product demand experienced in the home design industry. While 100% of our vendors - furniture, modular kitchen/wardrobe manufacturers, decor marketplace, services, turnkey contractors, etc. are on our platform, the big challenge will be to continue driving technology adoption across our entire supplier base.
Market size & opportunity The home design and decor industry in India, is witnessing hyper-growth and a sea change. The metrics really speak for themselves.
1. Across India, many families are now buying their first homes, getting their existing homes upgraded, or many who’re plain on just interested in making their homes look beautiful. In general, there is an increased consciousness of good home design that is created with passion and expertise, and products that look good, are personalized and can be easily acquired.
2. In India alone, the home design & decor market is poised to grow to over US$ 45B by 2017 from US$ 13B in 2010 fueled by the 25% YoY great growth in the organized retail sector. Of this, the modular kitchen, wardrobe, storage business itself will be over $10B by 2017.
3. This year alone, as many as 400,000 new homes will be bought across just the major metros and the vast majority of them will need to get their home designed, kitchens and wardrobes installed, and make their home beautiful.
4. Within the next 2 years 4-5% of this market is poised to move online. Clearly, a cutting-edge leadership company can be created worth more than a billion $ revenue in this space.
