Pepperfry homes in on 11 cities to open 20 showrooms

Leading furniture and home product marketplace Pepperfry will open 20 showrooms across 11 Indian cities from next month, a top official said today.
"We opened our first 'Studio Pepperfry' in Mumbai in December and will open 20 stores in 11 cities by year-end, starting in May," founder and chief operating officer, Pepperfry.Com, Ashish Shah told PTI.
The next showroom will be in Bangalore, he said followed by other top cities, including NCR, Hyderabad and Pune.
'Studio Pepperfry' is a concept showroom manned by designers that will feature Pepperfry furniture to serve as design inspiration for the customer before they ultimately make the purchase online.

Globally, the online to offline (O2O) commerce model is gaining traction globally, he said.
Pepperfry is present in 200 cities currently, and will double the presence to 400 Indian cities, including tier-II and tier-III towns, Shah said.

The company is cash-positive, and has set out to raise another USD 60-80 million (around Rs 300-500 crore) over the next "two to four months", he said.
Pepperfry has raised USD 28.5 million (around Rs 176 crore) over three fund-raising rounds so far, which are "being deployed to increase the reach through studios, offline marketing, and distribution over 400 cities", he added.
"Presently, up to 30 percent of furniture orders come from smaller cities, and we are focusing on seamless logistics and delivery to all centres," Shah indicated.

"The company's focus is and will strongly continue to be furniture (where sales are higher by value)," he said.