Furlenco bags Rs 10 Cr from Mafatlal Group promoters, others

Online furniture rental firm Furlenco has raised Rs 10 crore debt round from a slew of investors including Rekha Hrishikesh Mafatlal, Lakshmi Narayanan, and M Krishna Sindhuri Private Trust.

This is the second round of debt funding for the company from HNIs in the past two months. A couple of months ago, Bollywood actor Aamir Khan with four other individuals had invested $1.2 million in Furlenco in a debt funding round.

Last year, the online rental company had raised Rs 62.7 crore from Kris Gopalakrishnan's Pratithi Trust, Lightbox Venture Partners, and others.

The Bengaluru-based company is a subscription-based service with operations across Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Gurugram, Noida, and Pune.

Until June last year, the rental company had claimed to furnish more than 20,000 homes. It primarily caters to premium customers with an annual household income of Rs 10 lakh.

Lightbox Ventures Management had invested $6 million in Furlenco in March 2015. The platform claims to clock an average ticket size of Rs 3,000 and is looking to break even by March 2018.

Also Read: Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan invests in furniture rental startup Furlenco

Over the past two years, subscription-based rental services are on rise in India, Besides Furlenco, startups such as Flyrobe and Wrapd are exploring apparel and accessories rental verticals.

Currently, the online rental space is in an emerging stage, however, with rising urbanisation and frequent movements of working class from one city to another, the scope of rental platforms is bound to go up.

According to a Redseer Consulting report, the home furniture industry is a $25 billion market altogether, of which $250 million is online. However, by 2020, the home furniture industry is supposed to be worth $35 billion, with $700 million of it being online.

While over 90 per cent of furniture sector in India is unorganized, merely one percent of which is online. Furlenco competes with Rentickle, RentoMojo among a few others.

The funding news was first reported by paper.vc.