 "Tata Steel's Aashiyana expects to cross Rs 3,500 crore GMV in FY25")
Who buys steel online for building homes? A fair amount of people it appears -- going by the numbers clocked in by Tata Steel’s online platform for individual home builders, Aashiyana.
In the financial year 2024 (FY24), the early engagement and online platform for home solutions, hit gross merchandise value (GMV) of Rs 2,240 crore, up 30 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y). And in FY25, the GMV is expected to cross Rs 3,500 crore.
Aashiyana was launched in FY19.
“We have plans to spruce up the platform with suitable offerings. And Aashiyana has a huge headroom to grow,” Ashish Anupam, vice president-long products at Tata Steel, told Business Standard.
“Last year, Aashiyana contributed to building roughly 72,000 homes. But roughly three million homes are built in India every year. And this number is growing,” he explained.
To put things in perspective: Tata Steel’s retail sales volume was about 2 million tonne (mt) in FY24. Of this, about 13-14 per cent was online.
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Typically, an Aashiyana customer hails from Tier 2 or 3 towns. Most are middle-aged, but increasingly, younger consumers are getting on to the platform. There’s also a small percentage of Indian diaspora who are looking for “trusted” partners to build homes for their parents or relatives in India, according to the company.
“The idea was to reach every corner of the country and make anyone who wants to buy or make a house our customer. We realised that going forward we have to speed up the game of increasing reach and scale in rural India. And digital was the answer,” Anupam explained.
Aashiyana’s reach is close to 10,000 pin codes. The online retail is powered by the offline network with authorised dealers registered as sellers in the closed marketplace.