Rajiv Srivatsa, Co-Founder & COO, Urban Ladder

‘The one resource not to be taken for granted is time’ Furniture as an online business came to Rajiv Srivatsa’s mind in 2010 when he was doing up his home and realised just how tedious it was to buy good furniture. He had to drive to store after store, make a selection, arrange for delivery and then be there to supervise when it came home. Clothes and books had already entered the e-commerce space by this time and he wondered why something as important as a bed or a couch was still so cumbersome to purchase. “But at the time the idea didn’t translate into anything serious. Who would go and buy furniture online?” he says.

When he and his friend, Ashish Goel, decided to become full-time entrepreneurs in December 2011 and sat down to map out what they would do, the idea of a furniture e-store was still in their minds. “The more we brainstormed, the more we realised that there was a market for a well-curated, high quality online furniture store, outside of the deals and discounts segment. We decided to give it a shot. Our first goal was to stand for quality and design,” adds Srivatsa.

Within six months, the duo had the company up and running. They bought the domain name, sourced products, did photoshoots and received their first investment from Kalaari Capital. But before they got down to business, they had to come up with the right name. “The name, the brand…it is everything. With the name we were influenced a lot by abstract American brand names such as Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn. We didn’t want it to be something dull and ordinary, like Bed and Couch. So we chose the word ‘urban’. It represented a mindset, a certain lifestyle and aspirations. And then thought of adding ‘ladder’ to it. A ladder signified a movement upwards and it’s a household piece as well,” says Srivatsa. True to their management backgrounds, the two founders ran several surveys to test the response to the brand name. “People responded well to the name so we stuck with it.”

In July 2012, just 15 days after his after his daughter, Rhea, was born, Urban Ladder came into being and in the early months received around seven customers a day. It now has five lakh followers on Facebook and thousands of daily purchases. The gross merchandise value is estimated to be around Rs 300 crore and the company is valued at $250-300 million. As the customer base grew, so did their investments. In November 2014, Ratan Tata put in of $50 million. Last month, the company raised another $50 million from Sequoia Capital, TR Capital, Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners and Kalaari Capita. They have also received an undisclosed amount from Silicon Valley-based tech entrepreneurs Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan and are already underway with plans to raise another round of $100-120 million for the next year. They plan to eventually grow to a business size of at least $5 billion over the next four to five years.

“Initially it was tough, especially since we had no background in entrepreneurship. Tasks such as hiring, finding an office space, sourcing the right products…they all turned out to be key challenges. But we were well-versed in marketing strategies, business planning and technology, and that helped us carve out a niche for ourselves. The network we had access to thanks to our MBA helped with funding because a lot of our early investors were people Ashish knew or had worked with,” says Srivatsa.

A first-generation entrepreneur, Srivatsa never planned to enter the start-up space at first. Born and brought up in Chennai, he studied engineering at IIT Madras. He graduated in 2000 and then immediately started work with Infosys in the same city. After being there for two years as a software engineer, Srivatsa decided to add to his professional credentials with an MBA. “There are several things you learn at business school that shape your personality and way of thinking. Looking back now, had I not studied at IIM Bangalore, my life would be very different today,” he says. It was at IIM Bangalore that Srivatsa first met Ashish, who was his next door neighbour. Of course, they had no plans to start a business back then. In 2004, Srivatsa got his MBA and was recruited by Cognizant as senior business analyst. The job gave him his first opportunity for international work, taking him to Basel in Switzerland and Waldorf in Germany. In 2008, he quit Cognizant and started work with Yahoo in Bengaluru. That would be his last time working for someone else. “There just came a time when I wanted to do something more with my life, and coincidentally, Ashish was also looking to move out. We both loved the idea of creating something new, using the skills we had acquired over the years to make something of our own,” says Srivatsa.

Looking back now, he says, “Entrepreneurs take a risk with their life and resources. There is absolutely no way to predict whether you are going to succeed or not. All you know is that you are going to give your very best to the company. It’s not like working for a company where you only have one role. In a start- up, no role is too big or too small for the founding team. People become entrepreneurs for the thrill and satisfaction of creating something of their own from scratch and creating impact and value for people at large. Of course, you want your venture to be successful but money is never the governing factor.”

So how has success changed him? “There’s a greater sense of satisfaction because everything we have, we have built from scratch. So when a customer praises us on social media or writes to us, or our team achieves a milestone, that feeling of joy is ten times more now than what it was when we were working for a bigger corporate or brand,” he says, adding that he’s also much more conscious of the value of time today. Srivatsa now works nearly 12 hours a day throughout the week, taking only Sundays off. “Sunday is my day. I don’t go to work and enjoy spending it with my daughter, who has grown up alongside Urban Ladder. I’m generally a low-key kind of person.”

The company currently receives around 95 per cent of its revenue through furniture sales. They stock everything from the unique to the traditional. “It was to be complete experience for the customer. So we didn’t want to stock only beds and sofas and dining tables but also unique products and interesting designs. There are plenty of people who want to experiment with their furniture and some who want to stick to the ordinary. Then there are people who want to conserve space, and others who want large pieces of furniture. The trick is to be able to meet and match a variety of expectations, and to always stock the best quality,” explains Srivatsa. Going forward the plan is to be able to provide even more products for customers, including home decor options. Srivatsa says, “We want to focus on improving the overall customer experience and satisfaction as well as grow our product database. It has to be exciting online and app experience for all users. We want to be the best at what we do.”

About The Author

Sonali Acharjee