Interior design solutions marketplace HomeLane has raised Rs 33 crore ($4.6 million at current exchange rates) in a bridge round from JSW Ventures, Accel and Sequoia Capital, a company statement said.
The company will deploy the fresh funds towards expanding its experience centres in existing and new markets besides spending on technology and strengthening its brand, the statement added.
The company said it will double down on the number of experience centers across India by end of this year.
“HomeLane’s strategic focus has always been to provide a seamless home designing and furnishing experience to urban Indian home buyers. Our success in existing markets has given us the confidence to deepen our presence in these cities and venture into new ones too,” Srikanth Iyer, co-founder and chief executive of HomeLane said.
The Bengaluru-based company offers a virtual design platform and a real-time integrated pricing engine. The startup allows homebuyers to select from hundreds of kitchen, wardrobe or wall-unit combinations with different layouts, designs, colours and finishes. After homebuyers place orders, interior designers from HomeLane work with them to help customise the kitchen or wardrobe. HomeLane offers a 45-day delivery guarantee for fit-outs.
Owned and operated by Homevista Decor and Furnishing Pvt. Ltd, the company was founded in August 2014 by Iyer and Rama Harinath (chief marketing officer), along with the husband-wife duo of Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh. Iyer is a former CEO of Pearson India and founder of Edurite. Harinath has studied at IIT-Chennai and IIM-Bangalore. Krishnan Ganesh and Meena Ganesh are best known for setting up the education-cum-consumer internet services firm TutorVista Global Pvt. Ltd and selling it to UK-based Pearson Plc. for $213 million.
The Ganeshes had bought Bengaluru-based offline design firm Bello Interiors Pvt. Ltd and converted it into HomeLane.
HomeLane currently operates in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi-NCR and has nine experience centres and over 500 designers.
In June 2018, the company had struck a $3.5-million deal with Brand Capital, the ad-for-equity investment arm of media firm Bennett Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL).
Previously, it secured $10 million from venture capital firms Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and RB Investments in December 2017 and Rs 28.3 crore in its Series A round led by Sequoia Capital and Aarin Capital in 2015.
In November 2017, HomeLane acquired online home interiors marketplace Capricoast for Rs 90 crore.
HomeLane competes with online home decor startup Livspace and other online furniture players such as Pepperfry and UrbanLadder, besides horizontal e-commerce majors such as Flipkart and Amazon.
