In a fresh round of fund raising, home design startup Livspace has raised $60 million. The key investors in this round include Tahoe Investment Group from Hong Kong, Mercer Investments, Singapore and EDB Investment. Kharis Capital, an investment management firm from Europe has also participated in this round. Nicholas Cator, MD Venturi Partners has also made an investment in his personal capacity. The amount is likely to go up to $90 million or even touch $100 million as the company is making multiple allotments of different categories.
Livspace has so far raised $150 million and the key investors are TPG Growth and Goldman Sachs.
This investment in Livspace is seen by observers as an indication of the increasing confidence in focused verticals which can deliver the results and turn profitable. Some of the other examples being cited are FirstCry, Lenskart, UrbanClap and CarsDekho. The common thread running through all these startups is that they are all B2C businesses with direct customer facing models. The investors see more value in these ventures.
Coming back to Livspace, the company follows a business practice in the real estate sector where it can assume ownership of a housing project, end to end. Design, manufacturing and execution are all monitored and driven by their team ensuring the customer has the best experience in the whole process. It has physical design studios where customers are able to visit and choose the designs to suit their properties and place orders for interiors etc.
Livspace has moved to overseas markets as well setting up a base in Singapore from where it expects to service the local Singapore market plus the Asia-Pacific markets stretching up to Australia.
Livspace has been able to attract investment from Ingka Group, the franchise partner of IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant.
Livspace is yet to turn profitable, with revenue of ₹80 crore and a loss of ₹146 crore. These are the figures for the last completed financial year ended March 2019.