Cityfurnish, an online rental marketplace for furniture and consumer appliances, has raised $5 million (around Rs 34.67 crore at the current exchange rate) in a Series A round of funding from a clutch of investors including Gmail creator Paul Buchheit and YouTube co-founder Steve Chen.
The Gurugram-based startup said in a statement that the other investors who participated included Global Founders Capital, Venture Highway, Soma Capital, SCM Advisors, Boomerang Ventures, as well as high-net-worth individuals.
Global Founders Capital is the venture capital arm of Rocket Internet, the German VC firm-cum-startup incubator that had stopped making fresh investments in India two years ago. VCCircle reported a fortnight ago that Global Founders Capital would invest in Cityfurnish.
Cityfurnish co-founder Saurabh Gupta said that the startup would use the fresh capital to strengthen its technological infrastructure as well as its brand position.
It is aiming to expand its business in 14 cities as well as launch a furniture subscription programme with no minimum commitment.
“We are here to fundamentally redefine the relationship of our product to be more fluid and less attached,” said Cityfurnish co-founder Neerav Jain.
Operated by Magneto Home Pvt. Ltd, Cityfurnish was founded in 2015 and received seed funding from Citrus Pay co-founder Jitendra Gupta.
The online platform lets consumers rent products across various segments, including home furniture, office furniture, electronic appliances and fitness products.
Cityfurnish currently caters to Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune and plans to offer services in Hyderabad and Chennai soon.
Last month, Jain told VCCircle that the company was also looking to expand to global markets, starting with West Asia.
“In that region, there are a lot of expatriates and we will target them with our services,” he had said.
The company posted net sales of Rs 6.3 crore for the fiscal year 2017-18, up from Rs 3.6 crore the year before, as per VCCEdge, the data research platform of Mosaic Digital. The company claims it has turned profitable for the year through March 2019 and recorded more than 100% growth in revenue.
Cityfurnish competes with the likes of RentoMojo, Furlenco, RentOnGo and GrabOnRent.
RentoMojo recently raised about Rs 5 crore from Infosys Ltd co-founder Senapathy ‘Kris’ Gopalakrishnan via non-convertible debentures.
Furlenco, which is run by Kieraya Furnishing Solutions Pvt. Ltd, raised its Series C round of funding last year led by the UAE-based venture capital fund Crescent Enterprises Ventures.
