How Livspace disrupted India’s interior design ecosystem

When Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava decided to renovate their respective homes, they realised how frustrating the process can be – from timeline and prices to quality. Turning their bitter experience into an opportunity, they laid the foundation of Livspace in July 2014. Its operations were launched the following year.

Today, Livspace is India’s largest home interiors and renovation platform. It currently operates in major metro cities including Bengaluru, Gurugram, Noida, Pune, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad and Chennai.  The company is associated with more than 2000 design partners and has designed over 5000 homes. In 2015, it launched its private label of modular kitchens and wardrobes and rolled out services for the same. It soon opened its offline design stores with virtual reality setups.

Being slightly high-priced, home interior is something that not anybody would opt for. Many even think that interior is all about furniture, modular kitchen and the right colour of the walls. Thus, how did Livspace manage to stand out in a market with infrequent purchase? What are the unique strategies that it adopted to be able to thrive?

Disrupting the interior design ecosystem with technology

One of the unique selling points of Livspace is that it leverages Canvas, its proprietary technology platform to connect homeowners with certified designers and vendors, thus making the entire process seamless and hassle-free. Through the platform, designers can manage their design project, plan the budget, converse with clients, track delivery and more.

Omni-channel strategy

The adoption of an omni-channel strategy by Livspace has also been instrumental in increasing the company’s average order value. From offering 3D virtual renders of their renovation process to conducting  offline meetings at design centres, the company has taken the hassle out of interior designs by bringing the best of both online and offline worlds together. It also acquired an investment from Ikea as a part of its plans to create an enhanced omni-channel experience for consumers.

All these factors have attributed to the company’s tremendous growth, which brings us to one of the mantras that Ramakant Sharma, one of the founders, lives by – “If you want to scale, always think for scale. Don’t invest in products and features that are intrinsically ‘unscalable’. But whatever you do, launch fast and then improve. Don’t wait for perfection.”