Cityfurnish is a startup from India that offers online furniture rental. It was founded in 2015 by Neerav Jain and Saurabh Gupta and today it has more than 10 thousand subscribers, $3MM in Anual Recurring Revenue.

In our 20th episode, Neerav tells us about the beginning of the journey, the idea validation process, the marketing channels that were successful and more.

Listen to the interview:

SHOW NOTES

The notes below are just part of the interview. Listen to the audio to get the whole episode!

FLEXIBLE AND AFFORDABLE

What is the problem that you’re solving for people in India?

I did my undergraduate in New Delhi—the capital of India. While I was studying there, we were three friends staying in an apartment. As we realized later on, more than 70% of the apartments in India are either unfurnished or semi-furnished. So, we also ended up in an unfurnished apartment.

That actually led us to a problem which we faced at that time: there was no alternative to buying expensive furniture for temporary needs. So that was kind of a problem statement: If you don’t want to buy new furniture or old furniture, there needs to be a solution for it or an alternative […]

[…] there was no alternative to buying expensive furniture for temporary needs

Then, when we were leaving college, the second problem occurred. While we’re moving out of that city, it’s not easy, and it’s very painful actually to either discard or resell the furniture. So, that was a kind of an awakening to us that the amount that we had spent to buy the furniture and the amount we got from selling the furniture was frankly disproportionate. […]

[…] the amount that we had spent to buy the furniture and the amount we got from selling the furniture was frankly disproportionate.

At the same time, an average Indian shifts between jobs every 18 to 24 months. That does not resonate with their lifestyle. Because if they’re looking for something flexible and affordable, buying does not solve that problem.

SUBSCRIBE, INSTEAD OF BUYING!

How are you solving the problem for them?

We wanted to provide flexibility and affordability to our users. The way we do that is that we provide them a rental subscription plan that you can pay a monthly affordable rate. You can select items by packages, or by combos, or you can select it individually as well.

So, an average two-bedroom apartment, including furniture, furnishings, and appliances, will cost you roughly around $80 a month if you’re taking furniture from us, in India. And that resonated very well with the users.

TWO HUNDRED INTERVIEWS

Okay, let’s go back to September, 2015…

The day zero scenario was actually very funny and very challenging. We follow this book, The Four Steps to Epiphany. There was this very good saying: “For every assumption, you need validation.”

The way we went about it was that first, we needed to validate: “Is there a need for rental furniture or is it something we just want to solve, but there is no market need for that?”

That was day zero for us. Just me going into metro cities and job hubs where majority of IT centers are located and doing interviews. So, I did around 200+ manual interviews, in which I asked two major questions.

Cityfurnish’s Offices: 2015 (left) and 2017 (right)

First was “If you’re living in a rental house and if that is unfurnished, how will you furnish it?” As I expected more than 95% said, either they will buy new furniture or old furniture.

My reason to ask that question was to understand: “Is there an awareness already about furniture rental available in the market or will we have to create that awareness and category as we go about that?”

That was day zero for us. Just me going into metro cities and job hubs where majority of IT centers are located and doing interviews.

The second question we asked them: “If we provide you two-bedroom furniture and appliances, rental solution, around $80 a month, does that excite you?” And an astounding 89% said “Yes”. And we got our first 20 subscribers through that interviews itself.

So that was a big resonance for us, though the category awareness was not there. But if the category awareness is available to the users, the conversion is there. And there is a market sizable need, which we need to solve.

LEAN START

Did you count on any money at that time?

That time it was on ourselves. First of all, to do the interviews and surveys, we didn’t need any money at that time to start with it. Even the website was something which I and Saurabh did in the house.

So it took very limited budget to start with. But, as soon as we started getting orders and to buy the inventory and to fulfil those orders, we started using our savings to fund that.

OLD PARTNERS

What are your backgrounds?

I come from a furniture industry background. I did my undergraduate in Commerce. Post that I was working with Pepperfry—a retailer of furniture in India.

Saurabh is graduated from IIT in Computer Science. He has done his MTech from there. He has worked in companies like Vodafone and HCL and Mdocs, for close to 10 to 15 years before we’ve both started in one more venture—prior to Cityfurnish, That did not work eventually.

Post that, we started Cityfurnish. We knew each other for I think like two and a half years before we started Cityfurnish.

GOOD ENOUGH TO LAUNCH

Was this first version much different from what we have today?

The first version was very limited. We just had five options in total for furniture, at that time. The homepage and the products page were kind of similar. You just placed an order, then everything was done manually at our end. We used to call the customer, send them the emails, collect their KYC over the email.

Now, most of it is automated. The customer can have multiple items, view, place the orders, do the payment and upload documents also on the website. […]

We have done a lot of iterations from 2015 to today. And in every iteration, the theme which is consistent is that our users should get more trust and confidence while coming on to the Cityfurnish website.