The Indian real estate market size is expected to touch US$ 180 billion by 2020. The housing sector alone contributes 5-6 per cent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Clearly, the dream of the ‘Makaan’Â along with the Roti and Kapda is coming true for a large number of Indians.
And when you buy a house, you want it to be decorated in the best way possible. The well traveled Indian of today wants a home that showcases the identity of the owner. However finding a good interior designer you like at the price you like is a task.Even when you find one, getting the materials sourced is truely a challenge. And from the time the home is complete to the time the interiors are done, it takes about 7 to 9 months. The new home interior design and decor market place, Livspace, now solves the problem of deigning your homes the way you like it.
The company creates designs with in house international designers and also with boutique home designers spread across the globe. You can browse through this catalog of designs and choose the design you like. Or you can also create your own design and personalise it to suit your home by combining multiple design ideas from the Livspace catalog. If you then choose to buy this look from Livspace, the entire interiors of the room you just selected/ designed will be delivered to you within 4 to 6 weeks. Livspace claims to reduce the time required to get all your interiors done from 4 to 6 months to about 4 to 6 weeks.
The company has build their product based on three pillars technology, design and sourcing. The founding team at LivSpace is a strong team supporting each of these facets.
Anuj Srivastava is the CEO and Co-founder of Livspace. He is also a founding advisor and investor at Jungle Ventures, while being a prominent angel investor in early-stage internet startups. One of his more recent exits was ZipDial, a mobile marketing platform which was acquired by Twitter. Formerly, Anuj worked at the Google Mountain View headquarters (San Francisco Bay Area), where he led WorldWide Product Marketing for the eCommerce team, and in the past, led the product marketing function for Google Local/Maps and many other online ad products including AdSense and the Google Display Network.
Anuj started his career in the Silicon Valley where he worked as the Head of Product Marketing at Encentuate, an identity and access management company, which was acquired by IBM. Anuj grew up in India, went to school at IIT Kanpur, received his MBA from the London Business School, and has lived & worked across India, San Francisco, London, New York, and Singapore.Anuj is responsible for handling strategy, product management, growth, recruitment and PR at Livspace.
When it comes to building a product with such high design content technology innovation is of prime importance. What makes our product strong is the interactive home automation which helps users visualize their own homes spaces with our products. The users are having a very positive experience and our company has grown mainly by word of mouth.
says Anuj. At the heart of Livspace is their rich design catalog created by the company as well as sourced from multiple designers from India and overseas. Shagufta Anurag is the founder and Chief Design Officer at Livspace and is responsible for designs available on Livspace. Shagufta is an architect and has also earlier founded Space Matrix,one of Asia’s largest interior designing firms, in 2001. Shagufta is responsible for design vision, product strategy and execution, sourcing partnerships and developer relationships at Livspace.
Our core differentiation is the rich design catalog that we provide our users. We are allowing our users to choose from designs sourced from some of the best designers in Bangkok, Italy, USA and many other countries. We have made the process of getting a designer home much easier for our users.
says Shagufta. Ramakant Sharma is the Chief Technology Officer of Livspace and is responsible for handling technology strategy, operations, finance, and online/offline customer experience. Ramakant is a B Tech from IIT Kanpur and an MBA from ISB Hyderabad. Before founding Livspace, Ramakant was one of the core team member at Myntra.
While a large number of players available in the market today such as Pepperfry, Urban Ladder and FabFurnish focus on selling loose furniture items to home owners and thus limiting their ticket size to 20000 INR on an average, Livspace works with a completely different model of selling the entire ‘look’ to their users and in fact partners with the likes of Pepperfry, Urban Ladder and FabFurnish for sourcing their products.
Livspace is now present in all the major cities in India. In December 2014, the company raised Rs 29 crore from Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Jungle Ventures. The company is already seeing interest from a number of investors in India, Singapore and USA for the next round of funding.
We plan to use funds for building innovation through technology in our product, expanding aggressively to many more cities in India and getting more and more creative designers on board.
says Anuj. The company is focused on creating a highly innovative product that solves a core local problem. The designers that exist today in the market are unable to scale their services as they are limited by the amount of work they can create. However with the help of a robust technology platform, Livspace is disrupting the interior design space and defining new rules of play in the interior design industry.
