Recently, the famous online Furniture store FabFurnish was acquired by Future Group for about rupees 20crore by marking its first acquisition deal in the e-commerce sector.
Future Group will retain FabFurnish’s brand name and will be using this platform to sell products from its home and furnishing business brand Home Town. FabFurnish’s management team and about 100 employees are likely to join the Future Group.
This is the move through which Future Group wants to move ahead into the online stage by making their own products and store grow more and thereby making their reach extend.
Though one of the sources said that “Kishore Biyani-led Future Group has completed its buyout of FabFurnish, as it looks to take on the threat posed by Swedish furniture retailing giant IKEA, which is expected to make its entry next year, and in the process, also marking the first exit of Rocket Internet in India.”
But Kishore Biyani who is the owner of Future Group has been repeatedly focusing on the point where he talks that through this online portal he can work and expand his business all over and it would not be limited to just a few cities.
In spite of being an in the early hours entrant, FabFurnish (Alix Retail Pvt. Ltd) could not prolong its advantage and succumbed to competition.
It faced hard-hitting competition from companies such as Pepperfry (run by Trendsutra Platform Services Pvt. Ltd) and Urban Ladder (Urban Ladder Home Décor Solutions Pvt. Ltd) that are funded by investors such as Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital.
Gurgaon-based FabFurnish was founded in 2012 by Chopra, Agrawal and Vaibhav Aggarwal. FabFurnish has raised over $30 million from Rocket Internet and Kinnevik to this point.
Rocket Internet, an e-commerce-focused venture capital firm and start-up incubator, is known for creating clones of well-known Internet businesses and then selling them once the business gains scale. However, India has not played out according to Rocket’s expectations.
Rocket Internet, together with Kinnevik, has been aggressively in the hunt for a buyer for online fashion retailer Jabong, which also has been under pressure to cultivate its business and has lost major market share to competitors such as Myntra and the fashion business of Amazon and Flipkart.
BY: DEVIKA SHARMA
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