Indian online furniture retailers have started offering additional services such as home decor and interior decoration to increase their business and differentiate themselves from horizontal players.

Urban Ladder, which recently launched interiors services, and PepperFry, which offers bespoke services, already report 10%-15% of their business coming from these verticals, company insiders say. The Indian online furniture market is expected to grow to the $700 million mark by 2020 according to a report by Redseer Consulting, with participation from both horizontal marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal as well as vertical specific players such as Urban Ladder and Pepperfry.

Vertical players have the benefit of owning the experience end-to-end and pushing products in decor, fittings, furnishing in addition to furniture from their catalogue.

Soon after US-based online home improvement and renovation platform Houzz opened its second office in Asia in Singapore, speculations have been rife about its possible entry to India by the end of 2016. Vertical players in the online furniture space are looking to grow their share of home decor and interior business through features and look-books in line with the Houzz platform.

"We stay away from masonry and the work of a sub-contractor," said Ashish Goel, cofounder of Urban Ladder. But it provides fit-outs for wardrobe and kitchen "which takes close to 20 days to complete", he said, adding that the vertical will make up to 15% of the firm's business "in a year's time". Urban Ladder, which launched the interior services a month back in Delhi and Bengaluru, at present provides fit-out services only in Bengaluru and Mumbai. The average order value for these projects ranges between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh, Goel said. 

In case of PepperFry, it routes additional services such as painting and masonry through its channel partners and also sees 25% of the bespoke orders coming from designers that it has on-boarded on the bespoke services platform. "The bespoke business makes up 10% of our business currently and we take a turnaround time of 45 days since the possession of the house," said Ambareesh Murty, cofounder of Pepperfry. 

(Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com  Author: Payal Ganguly)