Online furniture rental startup Furlenco has been raising small amounts in debt and risk capital almost every month for past three months. After raising $2.7 million from Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan and Mafatlal group promoters, the Bengaluru-based company has raised Rs 5 crore from existing investor Signet Chemical Corporation.
Founded in 1986, Signet Chemical Corporation is one of the leading players in the excipients business in India. With the fresh fund infusion, Furlenco has raised about Rs 195 crore total funding since its inception in 2011.
Furlenco is a subscription-based online rental furniture platform with operations across Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Gurugram, Noida, and Pune.
Last year, it had raised Rs 62.7 crore from Kris Gopalakrishnan’s Pratithi Trust, Lightbox Venture Partners, and others. Until June last year, it had claimed to furnish more than 20,000 homes. It primarily caters to premium customers with an annual household income of Rs 10 lakh.
Notably, Furlenco designs the furniture it rents. The company had secured over $30 million in a mix of equity and debt funding from Lightbox Ventures, Hong Kong-based venture capital fund Axis Capital, four other HNIs, along with unnamed NBFCs.
It also raised a debt funding round led by Aamir Khan and four other individuals. Three months ago, Furlenco’s competitor Delhi-based Rentickle had raised $4 million led by Ajay Relan, chairman of VC firm CX Partners, and ThinKuvate, a Singapore-based VC firm.
Currently, technology-led rental space is in a very nascent stage, however, with rising urbanisation and frequent movements of working class from one city to another, the demand of online rental platforms slated to get the substantial upside.
Also read: Growing from 1,000 to 25,000 users in two years: RentoMojo story
While over 90 per cent of furniture sector in India is unorganized, merely one percent of it is online.
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 on the whole, with $700 million of it being online.
The development was reported by paper.vc
