Junglee.com founders, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan have invested an undisclosed amount in online furniture marketplace Urban Ladder.
With the investment both the Silicon Valley based entrepreneurs will come on board and will work with Ratan Tata who has also made an investment in the company. Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Group made a personal investment in the company in November 2014.
“We are thrilled to have veterans like Anand and Venky onboard as investors to mentor and guide us. They have done some fantastic work in technology, and set very high global benchmarks. It is great that they believe in the potential of Indian e-commerce industry and are reinvesting in the ecosystem” said Ashish Goel, CEO & Co-founder, Urban Ladder.
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The investment from Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan comes at a time when the company is planning to triple the size of its tech team in the next six months. Both Mr. Rajaraman and Mr. Harinarayan are serial entrepreneurs who co-founded Junglee Corp., a price comparison portal in 1996 which was acquired by Amazon.com in August 1998 for around $250 million.
They also co-founded Cambrian Ventures, an early stage VC fund, in 2000 which funded companies like Mobissimo, Aster Data Systems and TheFind.com. In 2005, they also co-founded Kosmix, a website which organises the Internet by topic, that was acquired by Walmart.
Urban Ladder which had recently raised $50 million dollars in Series C round led by Sequoia Capital and TR Capital is ramping up its technology platforms and offerings.
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According to the company, technology will be a key driver in Urban Ladder’s growth. It is working on several tech innovations to solve complex furniture e-commerce problems. Some of the key focus areas for Urban Ladder are mobile, data and analytics and product visualization.
“Furniture and home décor is a highly unorganised category in India, and Urban Ladder has been able to fill the need gap by finding great solutions for customers. The company’s journey has been very impressive. It’s a great team, off to a terrific start, and well positioned to be the leading furniture and home décor company in India” said Anand Rajaraman, Founding Partner, Cambrian Ventures.
Urban Ladder is on an expansion mode by launching new product portfolio and introducing new categories, along with geographical expansion to 30 cities by the end of the year.
It has so far raised $77 million from Sequoia Capital, TR Capital, Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners and Steadview Capital in the last 3 years.