Pepperfry, a Mumbai-based online home furniture marketplace, announced that it has raised $40 million in Series F funding led by Pidilite Industries, the makers of popular homegrown adhesive brand. In March 2018, Pepperfry had secured Rs 250 crore as part of its Series E round from State Street Global Advisors.
The funds will be utilised to double Pepperfry’s offline retail footprint with a target of 150 stores by next fiscal year, for supply chain expansion and foray into emerging categories like mattresses.
Recently, Pidilite co-invested $30 million in online interior design company Home Lane. Pidilite and other such companies around the world are betting on startups to access newer customers, products, markets, technologies and trends. Coca Cola, Unilever, Danone, Godrej Consumer and Marico have made such long-term and typically strategic investments.
“With the pace of transformation currently under way, investing in disruptors gives established players a shorter route to market,” said Utkarsh Sinha, managing director, Bexley Advisors. “Despite abundant dry powder for late-stage deals, the transaction execution has tempered post-Soft Bank/WeWork. These deals are more common in earlier rounds, and therefore, such a late stage bet is a vote of confidence on Pepperfry’s traction and probably its unit economics,” Sinha said as per a media report.
Pepperfry was founded in 2011 by former eBay executives Ambareesh Murty and Ashish Shah. The company began as a horizontal online marketplace focusing on fashion and lifestyle.
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