Mebelkart ties up with 27,000 interior designers

In a bid to tackle growing competition in the furniture e-tailing space, Mebelkart, which is partially owned by online platform Askme, has tied up with 27,000 interior designers to offer complete home furnishing solutions — from setting designing to offering complete set of furniture for a house.

By Sunny Sen

In a bid to tackle growing competition in the furniture e-tailing space, Mebelkart, which is partially owned by online platform Askme, has tied up with 27,000 interior designers to offer complete home furnishing solutions — from setting designing to offering complete set of furniture for a house.

Mebelkart, which trails furniture e-tailers like Pepperfry, Fabfurnish and Urban Ladder in gross merchandise value, or GMV expects that offering interior designing solutions will bring in high transaction value of about an average ticket size of Rs 7,50,000. The average ticket size in the furniture business is Rs 10,000.

If all goes well, Mebelkart can upset the e-furniture space which is already worth $130 million and expected to become $700 million by 2020, and emerge as the number one player. Urban Ladder, which tops the chart with a monthly GMV of $2.5 million, can be far behind Mebelkart, explains Rahul Agarwal, CEO of Mebelkart. “By the end of the current financial year we will be doing a monthly GMV of $10 million. That is a potential No. 1 position in the industry,” he said.

Mebelkart, which has raised $20 million from Askme, is the fourth funded furniture e-tailer after Urban Ladder, FabFurnish and Pepperfry. Unlike its competition, Mebelkart uses a local delivery mechanism. It has 1,000 sellers, while Urban Ladder and Pepperfry mostly procure from Jodhpur in Rajasthan. Local procurement reduces breakages that are 9% of the cost in the business. Mebelkart has 1,000 sellers delivering to 20,000 pin codes. This also allows quicker delivery — with at least next day delivery in 20 cities.