As India’s e-market zone matures and takes in the upheavals of a dynamic platform and new government directives, the play up has now engulfed both brick and mortar companies to straddle the online space. This has resulted in e-retailing currently experiencing a growing distinction in market strategy displayed by large horizontal players (Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal) from its vertical counterparts – the likes of Fabfurnish, Pepperfry and Urbanladder along with Lenskart and Jabong and a part of the unorganised market, pulled in the fray too. And, making a difference to this space is Ankita Dabas, Co-Founder & CEO of FabFurnish.com, an online home and design platform. Ankita shares her belief with Corporate Citizen, that no furnisher can do without an online platform today and that it is the inevitable channel of the future
I have switched between fields as I am very numerically inclined,” said Ankita Dabas, Co-Founder & CEO of FabFurnish.com. “E-commerce was basically interesting to be because I am naturally inclined to data interpretation aspects and data mining. I am not so much of a brand marketer but, in this particular industry, I do have a sense of what consumers are looking for. India does not have a lot of offerings in this vertical but globally, it does and Ankita aims to bring more into this space on world furniture/ designs to India via the portal. Data points that the potential within the entire Indian furniture market is $ US 10 billion, whereby the residential sector accounts for a 70 percent share ($ US 7 billion), of which six percent is in the organized sector. “In the home furnishing sector, the online e-furnishing industry accounts for 1-2 percent of the entire furnishing industry currently”, she said.
For someone with a nearly a decade of experience in angel investing, private equity and investment banking with AIF Capital, J P Morgan and Merrill Lynch, she is hands-on with business development and strategic decision making. “...I also like the excitement of running a business and had to decide on the principle that I would rather not be attached to other businesses but create a business myself. I preferred a switch in a field where I have my core expertise and owning something that would be natural for me and for something that I have a passion for and also suit me.” Being married into a family with interests in home decor businesses, Ankita initially created and ran her own lifestyle-oriented ventures, Imperial Knots – a premium retail brand for handmade rugs and carpets and Ikka Dukka – a designer boutique store.
Eventually Ankita moved away from her own set-ups to take charge of Fabfurnish.com along with new co-founder, Ashish Garg. The company embarked on a restructuring mode in July 2015 with the original co-founders either quitting or gradually stepping down from their managerial positions around 2014. Interestingly, Fabfurnish was launched in 2013 as a start-up with initial funding via a German business incubator - Rocket Internet, with multiple e-commerce interests globally.
“I had a manufacturing background via family business that gave me a depth into understanding furniture and furnishings and therefore looked into this particular industry as I have my core manufacturing strength here. This is one vertical that interests me the most and that is what drives me on. I can also identify with a woman/buyer and their home furnishing needs.”
In June 2012, FabFurnish.com acquired Heavenandhome, another Rocket venture and created an online home furnishing and home decor platform showcasing some 2000 products and has since grown to include multiple verticals of product categories. Initially, the company followed both an inventory model and a managed marketplace model. In the inventory model, products are sourced from brands and were stored in FabFurnish warehouses. In the managed marketplace model, FabFurnish provides marketing, logistics and delivery. The inventory cum market place model in 2014, operated from six warehouses located in Mumbai, Jodhpur, Bangalore and Delhi- NCR. Besides, it also had centres in Delhi, Mumbai and other major cities to manage operations and logistics for efficient delivery of goods. Initial days saw Fabfurnish ticking 90 per cent of their sales from their own private labels.
Despite the complexities of the offline and online furniture trade and the flurry of online players into this segment; saw close to about $100 million as venture funds being pushed in the e-furnishing business in 2012. While this enhanced market potential; vendor management, logistics and warehousing did add to the burden for individual players.
“We have multi-vendors who can offer different aspects in home furnishings and so we can generate interest on these”
Ankita’s expertise in financial management, strategic business planning and execution gave the required boost to the brand for its next phase of growth and evolution. “Since February 2015, we gradually changed the business module; we are a market place model now as against the prevalent inventory model”, said Ankita.
“Based on new e-commerce regulations, it is a better concept, especially with respect to marketability. We have changed the way our market place module was with data mining and numeric that gives an advantage into vendor management and consumer behaviour. This is a different approach with our client and is more or less skewed towards profitability. While we work on more commercials with our vendors, we also concentrate on activities that are more related to marketing and less on other operations related matter, like logistics.”
The restructuring was to thwart losing out to competitors like Pepperfry, Livspace, Urban Ladder and others in the online space. “Pepperfry also runs on market place model and is our primary competitor with the same sort of verticals. But, with Urbanladder, they make their own product and here differentiation is that unlike them, we don’t hold inventory. We try to brand ourselves a lot more and try to create a need amongst our customer base and create new customers. We are not restricted by a particular type of collection that needs to be sold off as we don’t hold inventory and can generate new interests for our products as we have a strong vendor portfolio; almost 100 vendors to tap from. We constantly contact our vendors and tap them for freshness of product ideas”, she said.
With the transition, the company has now done away with their warehouses and aspects of logistics are left to the vendors. “The vendors know very well on how to deliver their products. We do the data know-how of the customers. We are there to market it well for the vendors. We do the data and they have to just connect with the user. So, manufacturing, marketing and dispatch is kept as specialised for the individuals who do it well. We can give as much number of vendors to our consumers which give a lot of freshness to the products. We are not restricted by only a set of vendors but can offer many vendors to our clients and offer huge variety of products.”
“We have multi-vendors who can offer different aspects in home furnishings and so we can generate interest on these. Vendor management, curation of vendor management and branding creates more organic traffic management to our site. We brand and curate content and in the long run this creates stick-to-itiveness with our customers. Lot of brick and motor vendors in Mumbai and Delhi too are coming online. So, they approach me for a branded platform that focuses on his product, providing him a steady user traffic flow.”
With Kishore Biyani’s (Future group), proposing to spin off its furniture retail segment Hometown and merging it with FabFurnish, talks are rife that the new entity will be listed separately which is slated to churn a target revenue of Rs.1,000 crore by the end of the next fiscal. “It’s a strategic acquisition. FabFurnish is now a Future Group company and is part of the group's long term growth plan. FabFurnish continues to be an online content driven marketplace and is striving to become India's largest and only profitable online home retail store,” said Ankita.
In contrast to Flipkart and Snapdeal, Ankita explains categorically that her customer base primarily is not a ‘deal seeker’. Her customer is usually 35-40 years and comes from a double income household category with a good social network. “We don’t play by numbers but by home concept, run campaigns and evoke interest –is just one way to engage with our customers. The main difference is, here our customer seeks a product and not a deal. For repeat customers, it is for better design and quality of product and off course if there is a deal, he has the option to go for it. Our customer comes to site because he is aware of the product portfolio that he can expect and may take up an offer advertised but definitely not a deal seeker.”
“...Ours is a slightly niche platform for a particular product genre and people come to us seeking their requirements. We differentiate ourselves by being more organic if not in terms of numbers; also we get many new customers on the basis of our previous customers as they see our USP and we also engage them with our concept sell”, said Ankita.
“We have multi-vendors who can offer different aspects in home furnishings and so we can generate interest on these”
“No difference being a woman in this field particularly, most important is to have an appetite to come around in this space. During the transition in 2015, we did a lot of rationalising, downsizing of personnel and shut down warehouses. We were not a start-up but had to rework on our business model into a marketplace online brand. I took over a team and guided them. Team building came all of sudden and overcoming that was a challenge. But, Ashish and I had gone through every little task and once the team is with you, you can achieve anything”, she said.
“...Not very many women might want to get into this domain or have the ability to take risks. I did spend crazy amount of hours to bring this up. My previous experiences in finance and in similar home decor family business helped me too. But, if one has the efficiency to perform, then there is no gender differentiation.... “As furniture manufacturing facilities keep getting more updated in India, there is more scope from the market place and industry point of view.” As competition heats up in India's furniture sector, with three fourths being controlled by the unorganised sectors of carpenter and standalone stores, “future plans and self challenges are to build positive changes in becoming a more efficient firm by sticking to the same business model for the next 2-3 years,” she said.
By Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
