Pepperfry, the country’s largest furniture and home decor marketplace, is garnering 10 per cent of its overall revenue from Pepperfry Bespoke, a brand-new design content/consulting-led service which was recently launched in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon and Pune.
Launched last November, Bespoke is an attempt to take customers through the entire process of browsing and choosing from curated room designs created by in-house designers; getting them customised by personal consultations with designers at their homes; after which a dedicated account manager will deliver the design and ensure everything up to installation is executed within 45 days. A one-year warranty and post-sales services are part of the offering.
Customers can shop for looks by room or style. A dedicated team of 55 professionals has been allocated to Pepperfry Bespoke. The service will be launched in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai shortly.
Natural progression Pointing out that Pepperfry Bespoke was a natural progression for the company, Ashish Shah, founder and COO, Pepperfry.com, said: “Until recently, our focus was on providing variety (80,000 products), experience, delivery and support to our large base of 2.7 million registered customers and 5 million visitors per monthWe have seven 3D images of each product in our catalogue, we introduced augmented reality on our mobile app last year, and we have 400 of our own vehicles that deliver to 500 cities within 10-12 days. Now, we are concentrating on design content and consultancy, which is free for customers because not every customer can afford to pay for interior design services.”
On track to achieve a revenue run rate of ₹1,000 crore in 2016, Pepperfry’s overall average order value stands at ₹16,500, which Shah says has risen dramatically to ₹4 lakh for Pepperfry Bespoke.
“Customers typically buy more than one look, thereby pushing up the order value as each look would cost a few lakhs.” Pepperfry continues to provide free design advice and consultancy to customers via its team of interior designers at Studio Pepperfry, its experience centres in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Kolkata and Pune.
According to startup tracking firm Tracxn.com, there are 200 start-ups in the furniture and home decor market in India, of which 22 have raised a total funding of $252.4 million.
Growing market Pepperfry and Urban Ladder, which have raised $128 million and $77 million respectively, are the largest players in the segment that is witnessing consolidation as startups look to serve end-to-end customer needs.
Pepperfry Bespoke directly competes with Livspace.com, an in-home design and furniture company that promises to deliver a finished designer home in 8-10 weeks and has raised $12.5 million in capital. Online sales of furniture and home decor has grown from sub-$100 million in 2014 to $300 million, constituting a small fraction of the country’s $20-$30 billion furniture and home decor market. Pepperfry accounts for nearly 50 per cent of that market today.