Flipkart is aiming to become the largest furniture retailer in India by this year end with its ambitious goal to register a whopping 15 fold growth in the country’s high value category that also assures to delivery healthy gains. The company has relied mainly on the categories including mobiles, electronics, and apparel in order to stimulate its rapid growth.
This year, Flipkart is facing the need to temper growth along with profits and it has led the company seek newer product categories such as automobiles and home furnishing that deliver both large margins and transaction sizes. The furniture segment has been launched six months back and it is one of the company’s top six categories as it faces stiff competition from Urban Ladder and Pepperfry, the specialized furniture portals.
Kishore Biyani’s Hometown is also in the fray and it acquired Fabfurnish that is owned by Rocket Internet recently in order to build an omnichannel strategy that involves selling both offline and online.
Sandeep C Patil, Flipkart’s senior director stated that they have just scratched this segment’s surface. The company is one of the top five retailers of furniture in the country, he added. However, the specific sales figures are not indicated. The furniture market is worth $20 billion and it is bigger than the country’s mobile phone market. Flipkart is aiming to increase its furniture sales to $400 million on its platform this year.
There is a reason for the retailers to sharpen their growth in the high value category. The sale price of these items is around Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 on an average. Also, it has been predicted by Morgan Stanley, an investment firm that the categories of home furnishing and furniture will be the next big categories for the big horizontal ecommerce firms. The small offline payers have fragmented their business and the major points of focus are the management of logistics and supply chain, stated the report.
