Livspace sets aside $100 million for acquisitions

Home interior and renovation platform Livspace on Monday said it has allocated $100 million to invest in new offerings and direct-to-consumer (D2C) private labels in the home interiors, renovation and related home improvement segments.

The omni-channel startup, which offers end-to-end home interiors and renovation services, says the capital allocation is in line with its strategy to create multiple home interiors and renovation solutions, and D2C offerings, which serve homeowners across various segments in its markets such as India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

This comes eight months after the company raised over $180 million in a unicorn funding round led by US-based private equity firm KKR. The fundraising in February witnessed participation from existing investors such as Ingka Group Investments (part of IKEA retailer Ingka Group), Jungle Ventures, Venturi Partners, and Peugeot Investments, among others.

Livspace has so far deployed part of the allocated capital in acquiring a majority stake in companies such as Qanvast, a Singapore-based home remodelling and design platform.

"The strategic investment creates a common vision for both companies to transform the home interiors and renovations space while creating exciting new opportunities for design and architecture professionals," the startup says.

"As we continue to scale across new segments in existing geographies and enter new regional markets, we are looking for successful businesses and like-minded entrepreneurs that help us scale even faster... In line with this, we will aggressively and methodically pursue a build-or-buy strategy to create the maximum value for the ecosystem, deliver the best experience to our customers and ecosystem partners in our journey of becoming the go-to place for all things home," says Anuj Srivastava, CEO and co-founder, Livspace.

The strategy will be spearheaded by Ankit Shah, chief strategy officer at Livspace. "The capital and resource allocation strategy will help our business scale faster across markets, grow our margin stack further and create strong defensible moats," says Shah.

Based in Singapore, Livspace currently has operations in over 45 cities across Southeast Asia, India, and the Middle East region. In India and Singapore, Livspace claims it has witnessed over 100% growth in the last six months and 400% over the last two years.

Founded by Ramakant Sharma and Srivastava in 2015, Livspace has so far raised around $450 million in capital from global investors including KKR, Ingka Group Investments, TPG Growth, Goldman Sachs, Kharis Capital, Venturi Partners, FFP (Peugeot Group's Holding Company), EDBI, Bessemer Venture Partners, Jungle Ventures, Helion Ventures and UC-RNT.