Urban Ladder revenue doubled, losses narrowed significantly in FY17-18

Bengaluru: Furniture retailer Urban Ladder Home Decor Solutions Pvt. Ltd’s consolidated revenue doubled in the financial year 2017-18, even as losses narrowed by more than 70%. The company’s focus on expanding its offline stores to reach more consumers, and reducing its burn rate likely helped it both to grow revenue and stem losses.

Urban Ladder reported revenue of ₹ 204.73 crore, up just over 100% from ₹ 101.87 on a year-ago basis, according to documents filed by the company with the ministry of corporate affairs and sourced by business intelligence platform Paper.vc. Losses narrowed 74.44% to ₹ 117.32 crore from ₹ 459.11 crore.

The company aims to turn profitable by December 2019 to prepare for a potential listing in three years, its co-founder and chief executive Ashish Goel told Mint in an interview last month. It is also looking at raising funds over the next 12 months to aggressively grow its offline presence, Goel had added.

Over the past three years, Urban Ladder has faced its share of challenges, amid a broader slump in the online furniture retail space that has been struggling to attract investor interest. Urban Ladder also struggled to attract new investors during the period and, like other specialty e-commerce companies, was forced to cut losses and change its strategy after investors soured on consumer internet firms starting in late 2015.

“We were spending more than we should have been. For a business of our size, we were spending way too much on too many things. And that puts a lot of pressure, when your burn is high and your revenues are not keeping pace with your burn,” Goel had told Mint last month.

According to the company’s latest filing, total expenses were down by almost half in 2017-18 at ₹ 284.91 crore when compared with ₹ 560.99 in 2016-17.

Bengaluru-based Urban Ladder was founded by Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa in 2012 and has raised $103 million to date. It competes with other furniture retailers like Pepperfry in the online space and Swedish behemoth IKEA, which recently entered India with its first store at Hyderabad, in the offline space.