Future Group acquires FabFurnish.com: Report

The Group may pay Rs 15-20 crore for FabFurnish brand, which will be used to sell products from its offline store HomeTown, Mint reports

Marking its first buyout of an internet store, Kishore Biyani-led Future Group is set to buy online furniture store, FabFurnish.com, Mint reported on Wednesday. 

The Group may pay anywhere between Rs 15 and Rs 20 crore in cash and will be largely doing so for the brand FabFurnish, the report adds, citing two people aware of the development.

"FabFurnish's business is not profit-making, but we are buying it for the front-end," Kishore Biyani, Chief Executive Officer, Future Group told CNBC-TV18 in an interview on Wednesday.  

However, the net valuation would be much lower as the online furnishing firm has close to Rs 10-15 crore in the bank. 

Future Group will retain FabFurnish’s brand name and will be using this platform to sell products from its home and furnishing business brand HomeTown. FabFurnish’s management team and about 100 employees are likely to join the Future Group, the people cited above said.  “We will leverage FabFurnish’s online platform and delivery model to grow our presence in markets where we do not have offline stores or have minimal reach,” Kishore Biyani, chief executive officer (CEO) of Future Group, told the newspaper.

Meanwhile, the move will also help the Group to build a wall ahead of retail giant IKEA foray into India in 2017, a report in The Economic Times said. “We are creating the largest home furnishings company in the country. IKEA is coming in, and it will take them at least two to three years to become an Rs 1,000 crore company, and we are already there,” he told the publication. 

Gurgaon-based firm FabFurnish was founded in 2012 by Mehul Agrawal, Vikram Chopra and Vaibhav Aggrawal. The company has, so far, raised over $30 million from Rocket Internet and Kinnevik. 

Last July, its founders Agrawal and Chopra put in their papers to start their own venture. As a result, FabFurnish appointed senior directors Ashish Garg and Ankita Dabas to take over the management role, the report in Mint added.

The deal will see Berlin-based Rocket Internet’s making its first exit in India. The company has a portfolio of online companies which include FabFurnish, Foodpanda and Jabong.