Exclusive | Easing the furniture buying experience: Urban Ladder's Ashish Goel

Till now if you wanted to buy a piece of furniture the options available to you were - either hire a carpenter at home or hop from shop to shop to get that one piece that pleases your eye and occupies a pride of place in your home. And what a headache it would involve. But not any longer. For now you have an added option of buying home décor and furniture from the confines of your home. Courtesy Urban Ladder, the home décor retailer, with a digital store front at www.urbanladder.com. Urban ladder will help you to furnish your home in the comfort of your home!

Made from the best raw materials that are thoroughly seasoned (to remove moisture content) and treated (to make them termite and borer-free) before they are put into use, Urbanladder’s furniture boasts of high-quality finishing work. They offer a wide range of good-looking products with predominantly contemporary design with an international look.
Their current product portfolio includes tables & bar units, storage and shelves, seating, accessories and some exclusive Kaleido collection.

The company commenced operations in July 2012 and within a short time of less than six months has made a name for itself with orders pouring in from all over India. As for the idea behind the venture, Ashish Goel, Founder  & CEO, Urban Ladder says, “Existing brands were either poor on quality and service or too highly priced. We went down to the basics to understand this industry and after some intense planning, trials and discussions with the best manufacturers across India, we finalized a solution that could get distinctive well crafted solid wood products, at prices that would delight the end consumer.”

While setting their homes, Ashish Goel and his co-founder Rajiv Srivatsa spent a lot of time trying to get quality furniture and home décor. They realized that most of our friends and acquaintances also faced the same set of problems. There was a big need for good quality, well-designed, competitively priced and dependable furniture. A solution which would make shopping for furniture easy and effortless. And thus was born Urban Ladder.

According to the founder the idea has got great scope for anyone who has shopped for furniture in India or got furniture made from a local carpenter knows the amount of pain and frustration the process involves. Going from one shop to another across the city trying to select a design at a price point that you like. Sifting through the cheap Chinese imports to find that one piece that will look good in your house. Getting a carpenter to make something brings its own challenges with it. Risk of the design not being executed properly. Poor quality of materials used. Timelines which are never adhered to.

“The above reasons with a lot of consumer surveys and studies made us believe that an online store which takes away all these pain points has tremendous scope. The key would be to ensure that there is no dissonance between what the customer sees on the site and the end product that gets delivered to their doorstep. We have taken a number of steps to ensure this. From attention to good quality photography to detailed descriptions and silhouette images for comparison. Some of these initiatives are being copied by our competitors today, “ says Goel.

Currently the venture has been funded from own capital and initial round of funding from Indo US Venture Partners (Kalaari Capital). The investment has been made in 3 major areas - product design & development, customer service & delivery and building inventory of the products.

Urban Ladder delivers to Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi/NCR region. Say Goel, “Due to an overwhelming demand from customers in other cities, we will be very shortly increasing our delivery footprint in India. We are looking to add 3-4 more cities in the next couple of months.”

Urban Ladder is mainly using the internet and social media for marketing. It is also simultaneously doing a few small experiments in the offline marketing space to understand what will work for it.

On being asked what hurdles he sees his business needs to address, Goel replied “E-commerce as a whole needs to address a number of issues. Some of which are Internet penetration and usage – Needs to really grow for the e-commerce industry to grow as well. Customers have to get comfortable with the fact that it is possible to have a great buying experience online. Next is
Logistics & Supply Chain which continues to be a challenge with damages and poor customer experiences. Last but not the least India being a cash driven economy and card usage being very low compared to many nations, makes cash based transactions/Cash on Delivery very popular for all e-commerce sites. But it also brings in the additional complication of collecting that cash. Plus the fact that order confirmation becomes very difficult. Failed deliveries which add substantially to the cost of doing business.” Customer acquisition costs are quite high for most e-commerce players today, he further adds.

On Urban Ladder’s growth strategy, Goel says, “Our strategy is to continue to focus on the furniture vertical and keep doing what we do best - delighting customers. We also have expansion plans which include introducing a much wider line of products from sofas, beds to kid’s furniture.” The idea is that Urban Ladder has a presence in as many homes as possible in India, he concludes.