Home and Dry?
Urban Ladder is a rare
startup that had to actually scale down before it scaled up
With seed capital secure
before they launched and startup stars in their eyes, the founders of Urban
Ladder decided to go for broke when they launched in July 2012. The company,
initially backed by Ka laari Capital (it has since raised $77 million from the
likes of Sequoia Capital, Steadview Capital and TR Capital), launched its
services across the country, leaning on third-party logistics providers to make
deliveries. Rather than plaudits, Urban Ladder was inundated by customer
complaints.Realising its folly, the company did something unexpected -it went
from a panIndia presence to operations in just one city. “As a young startup
our only mantra was how to grow rapidly,“ says Ashish Goel, a cofounder of
Urban Ladder.As it turned out, building an online furniture business was much
more than warpspeed growth. “We operate in a trust-deficit market,“ he adds,
“We want to stand out with a focus on product, supply chain and logistics, as
we seek to build a large, stable and scalable business.“
In the last couple of
years, Urban Ladder appears to have made up for lost time, with the cofounders
claiming that the company is 4050% ahead of its own targets in terms of
customer acquisition, revenues and catalogue. “We had projected 10,000
shipments per month by December 2015, whereas we do tens of thousands of
shipments today...we are 18-24 months from what we call making a million homes
beautiful,“ says Goel. The company has painstakingly built its own delivery
network and supply chain to try to keep product quality high and today delivers
to 17 cities.
According to industry
estimates, the furniture market is worth $25 billion, with the organised
segment accounting for barely 1% of this and online players an even smaller
sliver. Goel says that Urban Ladder has had to build its market from scratch;
furniture design and construction continues to be dominated by the unorganised
sector and the packaging and delivery of these products continues to a
hit-and-miss affair.beThree years ago, when a fledgling Urban Ladder decided to
shrink its services to one city, it gave up 7075% of its business, when it
encountered low quality logistics, with hundreds of delayed deliveries or
broken products. Since then, the company has worked to rebuild its reputation
and create its own delivery network. “You have to build service to delight
(doubting) customers and create an intimate and delightful experience,“ says
cofounder Rajiv Srivastava.
ETM3JAN16
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