13 April 2017, India:
Mumbai-based Future Group is likely to shut down FabFurnish an online furniture store, which it had acquired from Germany’s Rocket Internet last year as per the report by Times of India.
Future Group is an Indian private conglomerate. The company is known for having a significant prominence in Indian retail and fashion sectors, with popular supermarket chains like Big Bazaar and Food Bazaar, lifestyle stores like Brand Factory, Central etc.
Gurugram-based FabFurnish was launched in 2011 by Vikram Chopra and Mehul Agrawal and Vaibhav Aggarwal. It acted as a dedicated online shopping destination for furniture and homeware with a diverse range of products. In April 2014, Aggarwal quit the company. A year later, other two founders too quit the company.
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“The acquisition did not work out for them so they are going to keep just one brand–HomeTown,” a source said. According to the report, even as the company plans to shut down FabFurnish, Future Group will invest further in HomeTown to scale up that business. As a result of the planned shutdown, around half of the employees of FabFurnish has been let go while others are being adjusted within the Future group. At the time of the acquisition, about 100 people from FabFurnish had joined the firm.
“While a set of people got affected by this development the rest are on a lookout for jobs outside,” another person aware of the matter said While FabFurnish’s end is on the horizon, almost after a year of acquisition, other prominent online furniture retailers have seen growth flattening due to sluggish demand and the complexity of the business. (Image- FabFurnish.com)