Furniture e-tailers are going to decorate, furnish your house too. Know how

In a bid to enhance their businesses, online furniture companies such as Urban Ladder, PepperFry and Houzz are expanding their horizons and are going to offer additional services too.

Apart from providing furniture and home decor items, the online furniture companies will help you in decorating the house and also in fitting chandeliers, lamps, etc.

Speculations are rife that US-based Houzz may enter India by the fag end of 2016 and to counter the competition in the online furniture market, which is expected to grow to $700 million mark by 2020, Urban Ladder and Pepperfry are looking at home decor and interior designing business too.

"We stay away from masonry and the work of a sub-contractor," Ashish Goel, cofounder of Urban Ladder, told ET. But it provides fit-outs for wardrobe and kitchen "which takes close to 20 days to complete", he said, adding that the vertical will make up to 15% of the firm's business "in a year's time".

Urban Ladder started the interior design services last month in Delhi and Bengaluru. It provides fit-out services only in Bengaluru and Mumbai.
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“The average order value for these projects ranges between Rs 5 lakh to Rs 8 lakh,” Goel told ET.

Meanwhile, PepperFry routes services such as painting and masonry through its channel partners.

"The bespoke business makes up 10% of our business currently and we take a turnaround time of 45 days since the possession of the house," Ambareesh Murty, cofounder of Pepperfry, told ET.

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