Livspace has an IKEA, but India’s furniture market needs reassembling

One year into India, furniture giant IKEA is slipping on its promises. Its investment in Livspace, looking to standardise the interiors business, could give it a leg-up. But the commercial synergies the two are exploring will take a lot more than what they’ve got on their catalogues

Vandana, 11 Jul 2019

The world’s largest furniture retailer IKEA, having seen India’s unique furniture buying behaviour, is now planning to ride on Livspace to propel growth

Livspace leverages technology to bring together India’s highly unorganised interior decor market

While it has done a decent job in products, delivering services at scale will be its biggest challenge

The IKEA deal may be an opportunity for Livspace to offer variety to its customers, plus it’s ticket to its global ambitions

When Swedish furniture retailer IKEA entered India in August 2018, every possible prediction was made—smaller furniture retailers will shut shop; the furniture market will become more organised; furniture sales, typically slow-moving, will soar…

Almost a year since, none of this has happened.

Instead, IKEA has realised India is an anomaly. Famous the world over for its space-saving and trendy furniture, furniture isn’t even IKEA’s most popular category in India—mattresses and cutlery sell faster at its Hyderabad store. Furniture isn’t a high-frequency category in India; people wait 4-5 years between purchases and, as Jesper Brodin, IKEA group CEO, said in an interview: Indians typically buy furniture when moving houses or having a child.

AUTHOR

Vandana

Vandana is based in Delhi. She covers vertically focussed startups in consumer internet space and also writes on travel tech and smartphones for The Ken. She has spent 13 years in journalism covering a wide range of subjects- equity markets, mutual funds to education and skilling, working at organisations such as Business Standard, CNBC TV18 and The Week in the past.

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