Home is where <br> the style is </br>

Finding the right home décor has never been easy. In order to set up a fancy home, it requires keen attention to detail, customisation options and design expertise. Keeping all these in mind, Umesh Sangurmath and Ravi Rao started mygubbi, an e-commerce company offering interior and furnishing solutions to buyers. The new venture came on the back of their successful exit from Smart Retail, a chain of food and grocery stores. The duo have subsequently inducted Aiyappa Alameda for his in-depth knowledge of modular and non-modular furniture business and Sunil Rao, who has prior experience in system architect and tech management, as co-founders.

“Buyers are looking for highly personalised interior design and décor services. And, the only way to tap into the market was to reach out to consumers through an online channel, yet provide enough offline touch points to cater to the pensive needs of the owners. Buyers also require professional execution and installation services from organised players. Mygubbi addresses these challenges by providing end-to-end solutions from design to execution, along with the flexibility of customisation,” says Sangurmath.

While customers are not willing to buy entire products online, mygubbi has successfully blended strong delivery service with a marketplace model and utilises a seamless online and offline approach. Co-founder Rao says, “As robust back-end infrastructure is required for sustaining service delivery quality, we have invested in backward integration which is a fully-operational assembly unit and an experience centre.”

Powered by an initial investment of $500,000, the start-up has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from multiple angel investors led by Vipul Parekh, co-founder of Big Basket, Ananda Kallugadde, co-founder of NeoBytes and Rajesh Murthy, executive vice president of Infosys. “We have been gaining good traction in the Bengaluru market and are targeting a monthly run rate of about 100 homes in this city. We are also expanding to Mumbai, Pune, Mangaluru and Coimbatore over the next few months,” adds Sangurmath.