Urban Ladder is an online furniture and home decor retailer based in Bangalore, India. It was founded in 2012 by Ashish Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa to make buying furniture and home decor easier for customers. Urban Ladder targets digitally-savvy individuals between the ages of 23-45 who are buying or renovating homes. Through mobile apps and augmented reality, it provides virtual home trials to help customers visualize how furniture would look. Urban Ladder aims to position itself as a one-stop home solutions provider and the reason homes across India look beautiful.

1. Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning

3. Urban Ladder
 Urban Ladder is a startup based out of Bangalore, India. The
furniture and home decor online store is headed by co-
founders CEO Ashish Goel, and COO Rajiv Srivatsa.
 The idea behind Urban Ladder is to make it easier
for customers to seek out and buy great furniture and home
decor.
 It currently offers an eclectic range comprising coffee tables,
side tables, dining tables, balcony sets, book-racks, display
units, wall racks, and a host of other products.
 The company is also a private label and makes its own
products. Most products are pre-built. Logistics and services
are handled directly by the company.
 It delivers in 29 cities across India, Tier1 and Tier 2.
 It started out with pan-India operations in July 2012 but
quickly rolled back to limited cities with a trained delivery and

4. Founders
Story behind Urban Ladder
• While setting up their
homes in 2010, Ashish
Goel and Rajiv Srivatsa
faced difficulties in getting
furniture. The duo kept
discussing the problem for
a month until they thought
of starting Urban Ladder.
• By scaling down before
they scaled up, the three-
year-old Urban Ladder has
climbed to the top of
India's online furniture
retail market.Ashish Goel
Rajiv Srivatsa

5. Segmentation

6. Profile of the Target Customer
 Anyone buying a home in the Rs 40-50 lakh range, will
go for furniture in the Rs 4-5 lakh range, including
kitchen. That’s their target consumer.
 Anyone in the renovation cycle, who bought a house
several years ago, might want to re-do a room or several
rooms because they are bored of it. That is a big second
audience.
 And a big third audience is anyone moving cities among
the top 30 cities, who’s probably married but have still
not bought a home where they are looking to do-up
some part of their house. All these three are audiences
that span across the board.

7. Profile of the Target Customer
 Demographic: They are well-read, educated, earning
well, between ages of 23-45, who will buy online, and are
used to shopping online.
 Psychographic: They are design conscious, socially
aware and active, digitally buy stuff, including lifestyle
purchases from the likes of Myntra or Jabong.
 Behavioral: They are willing to buy big ticket items at a
single click and are finding it far more convenient to shop
online, as it ensures them to check out how the furniture
would look in their home settings.
 During the festive and wedding season, there is an
impressive surge in the number of buyers as this is the
time when people like to renovate their homes and buy
new furniture.

8. Targeting

9. Evaluating Market Segment:
Segment size and growth
 Furniture and Furnishings market in India has been
growing at a compounded annual rate of 6-8%.
 80% of this market is unorganized, with a large number
of unbranded players and local carpenters. The branded
organized retail segment account for 15% of the market
and 0.5% of the market is captured by online retailers, so
there is significant headroom for Urban Ladder to grow.
 India’s furniture market is estimated at $15-20 billion
(Rs.93,000-1,24,000 Cr.) in India alone.
 The furniture category is big and offers a great
opportunity as there isn’t a single player who is valued
for more than $100 million.

10. Segment Structural Attractiveness:
Level of Competition
 Horizontal players: Flipkart,
Snapdeal, Myntra, Amazon
(These players have 50 times
their traffic.)
 Vertical Players: Pepperfry
(set up in January 2012),
FabFurnish (March 2012)
and HouseFull (August 2006)
and Zansaar.com
 Offline Players: Home Town,
Lifestyle Home Centre,
Godrej Interio, Fab India,
Style Spa, DLF Pure, Evok
(Hindware)
 The company is gearing up to
face Ikea, the Swedish
furniture and home decor

11. Segment Structural Attractiveness:
Company Objectives and
Resources
 Unlike competitors which operate as marketplaces,
Urban Ladder own processes end-to-end, which means
they control everything from selection of wood and
designing the furniture to the delivery of the purchase.
 While competitors offer wide product ranges, particularly
in home décor, they have stuck to a smaller offering and
kept inventory light, using buying behaviour data to
determine stock keeping units (SKU) and cross-promote
products.
 Strong supply chain understanding and distinctive
product differentiates them vis a vis their competitors.
Furniture is a complex product which the horizontal
players take as one more category, but, Urban Ladder
works on design, sourcing and quality of product.
 Today they have the highest consumer satisfaction score
in the industry.

12. Targeting Digitally Savvy, Urbane and
Design Concious Niche Audience through
technology
 To cater to the digitally savvy, urbane, design concious TG,
Urban Ladder has launched three apps – Urban Storage,
Living Spaces and Core Catalogue app, through which it
provides home trials, consultation and augmented reality of
5,000+ furniture.
 Furniture is a complicated product to buy. It’s a high touch
and feel product, and is non-standard. It’s also a higher ticket
purchase than most other purchases. The front-end
experience of the website and mobile apps help the
consumers easily discover, navigate and browse the selection
of products.
 It also helps consumers get true and rich information around
each product, and make them get a sense of both how the
product looks and fits in their house. Last but not the least it
gives them a sense of trust.
 Thus, the company is investing a lot on mobile technologies
to provide a great experience on areas like visualisation,

13. Targeting their Segments through
Technology
Augmented Reality: Solved the
problem of 'How does the furniture
look inside my house’ for the
customer.
Engaging and
interactive mobile apps.

14. Targeting for Mattress

15. Targeting Kids
Urban Ladder launched their all new range of furniture, just for kids! Coloured
in whimsical, pastel hues & named after children’s favourite cartoon
characters, they’re sure there’s never going to be another dull moment with
your kids’ furniture.

16. POSITIONING

17. Positioning
 Ashish Goyal, Founder wants “Urban Ladder to
be the reason why homes across India look
beautiful.”
 They intend to be a complete home solutions
provider in the coming days. They want to
strengthen their décor portfolio to graduate from
an online furniture store to a one-stop home
furnishings provider.
 To position themselves, Urban Ladder had only
recently jumped into TV, but its initial efforts were
focused on broad-reaching demography.
 Founders believe organic growth coupled with
social media marketing and positive word-of-
mouth are sufficient for them.

18. Urban Ladder visualizes evolution
of a ‘beautiful home’
These films share stories of how the
first piece of furniture customers
bought from Urban Ladder made
them re-imagine a space and led
them to buy more of your products.
The narrative brings out the
consumer context -- the role of
furniture in creating a beautiful home
and the experiences that follow

19. Urban Ladder aims to ‘bring people
closer’
Campaign, revolves around the thought
that home is where people connect with
each other, and furniture plays an
important role in it. The brand campaign
‘brings you closer’ aims to highlight this
warmth, and the emotional undertones
that Urban Ladder adds to a home, with
only a subtle product reference.”

20. Digital Campaign- ‘Creature Comforts’
Furniture portal Urban Ladder
has positioned itself as urbane,
suave and sophisticated.
The new online campaign has 4 short
videos featuring pets, and are aptly titled
‘Creature Comforts’. The campaign talks
about the different services offered by
Urban such as Free Delivery and Assembly,
Interest Free EMIs, Easy Replacement and
Returns and Cash or Card on delivery are
depicted through pets in the campaigns
which lends humour to the ads through their

21. CSR Initiative
 Urban Ladder has from the very start positioned itself as
a socially responsible company.
 When a customer chooses the exchange offer on the
Urban Ladder website, he/she receives a 10% discount
on the new purchase.
 The Urban Ladder team picks up the old furniture to
ensure it is donated to someone in need. Through
Milaap, Urban Ladder has partnered with 11 NGOs
across the city who will receive the old furniture. These
NGO’s contribute towards women empowerment and are
involved in education, health and community
development.
 The initiative provides an opportunity for customers to
donate their old furniture. At the same time, it ensures a
low-cost option for an individual in the lower strata of the

22. Future Outlook
 The company is also setting up a comprehensive
team of design consultants to advise consumers
on furniture purchases and doing up their homes,
a service offered by smaller rivals HomeLane and
Livspace.
 Home buyers will be the initial targets for the new
categories.
 “They (home buyers) will give us the keys to their
houses and then 15 to 20 days later, allow us to
give them the experience of walking into their
dream home.”

23. Thank You