Askme.com, the local search engine platform with massive capital backing, is going to invest around $20 million in MebelKart, an online furniture seller, to grave over three quarters majority stake of the company, reports ET.
Once the funding round closes, AskMe will have over 75% stake of the company. It will operate as a separate entity but there is a possibility that it might get merged with AskMe in future, considering that the latter is buying a majority stake. With this investment, the companies are looking to capture a significant amount of market share in the furniture space.
Founded in 2012 by Rahul Agarwal, Nikhil Saraf and Ranjeet Vimal, Mebelkart currently sells more than 1,00,000 furniture products across the nation through its over 1,000 sellers.
The Bangalore-based start-up has a team of 30 people across range of sector including technology, business development, catalogue, marketing and design. It aims to become the largest player dealing in logistically challenging categories through its unique locations based inventory exposure methodology.
Manav Sethi, Group CMO Askme & Head of Digital Strategy, said,
There are no major brands in this space beyond brands which are on the upper end of the spectrum. So, while we were looking at the furniture space very closely we stumbled upon this young team. They have not only built a good relationship with the merchants but they have also created an awesome online product.
In two months of acquiring the online grocery player Bestatlowest.com, we scaled them to become a Delhi/NCR player. And within the next four quarters we intend to scale them up to pan-India operations.This is how we plan to scale up MebelKart as well
Online furniture selling is a hot business in India right now. Many start-ups in the space of furniture selling have raised significant amount of funding in a bid to emerge as market leaders. Last month, PepperFry raised $100 million in funding led by Goldman Sachs with participation of others. Urban Ladder raised $50 million in Series C round of funding in April 2015.
