Livspace ropes in Flipkart executive as first-ever marketing head

Bengaluru: Online home design startup Livspace (Home Interior Designs E-commerce Pvt. Ltd) said it has appointed Kartikeya Bhandari, formerly senior marketing director at Flipkart, as its first ever chief marketing officer. Bhandari will lead overall brand, marketing, and demand generation efforts at the home design firm as it enters its next phase of growth and expansion, Livspace said in a statement on Thursday.

At Flipkart, Bhandari led the marketing strategy and launch of the online retailer’s popular Big Billion Days sale, among other projects. Before Flipkart, Bhandari worked with Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia in multiple sales and marketing roles both in India and in Finland. At Livspace, the newly-appointed marketing head’s key tasks will include building on the company’s success and spearheading its evolution into a brand of national and global repute.

Late last year, Livspace raised $70 million in a Series C funding round led by private equity firm TPG Growth and Goldman Sachs as it sought to expand to new cities, open a large number of stores and accelerate sales growth. It was one of the largest funding rounds by a vertical e-commerce startup, many of which have struggled to attract capital in the past two years.

After the funding round, Livspace co-founder Ramakant Sharma told Mint in an interview that the company was targeting monthly gross sales of $11-12 million by March 2019, up from roughly $7 million at end-September. The company had also said it planned to expand its presence to six more cities by 2019, up from seven cities back then.

With plans to enter new markets, doubling its retail footprint and enter new product categories on the horizon, Livspace said on Thursday that it believed the time was right to bring a veteran marketing leader on board. “This is a crucial time for the business as we are poised to take Livspace to its next phase of growth. Kartikeya’s vast experience in online retail and marketing will help us accelerate our brand goals,” Anuj Srivastava, Livspace’s co-founder and chief executive officer said in a statement.

Livspace primarily competes with Sequoia Capital-funded HomeLane, as well as bigger furniture e-retailers, Pepperfry and Urban Ladder. It offers a marketplace for customers to buy interior designs online from designers, and software tools for designers to streamline their workflow.