Recreating designs

It is quite common to have wistfully looked at a room and longed for it to be your own. And the idea might have seemed quite lofty at that time. But recreating designs don’t seem like such an alien concept anymore.

Livspace, an end-to-end home design and decor marketplace for home owners and designers in India intend to make this simpler for people. They have a repository of pre-created looks for various parts of a home and offer to deliver the same product to those customers who desire it.  Currently operational in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, their standard delivery time for a piece of work is said to be eight to ten weeks.

In an interaction with Deccan Herald, Anuj Srivastava, CEO and co-founder of Livspace, discusses replication, customisation and execution of designs. Excerpts:

How did you curate the catalogue of designs for homeowners?

Home design has traditionally been a fragmented industry and has required homeowners to coordinate with several vendors and face unreliable timelines. With our proprietary algorithm and data science, we can automatically generate tens of thousands of looks at just the click of a button. Designers around the world can create looks with next to
zero cost — at a fraction of the time — compared to the same being done manually. It’s a heterogeneous mix as these looks have been created to cater to
contemporary trends on a country and city-level, diverse design styles, preferences, budgets, layouts, and home sizes.

The promise of replication of design (along with customisation) seems ambitious prima facie...

Ambitious, but possible when you combine design with technology. Once a look is selected by a customer, the underlying furniture products, decor items, and services like false ceiling, wooden flooring, wallpaper etc. are delivered to the owner’s home within a few weeks and our team makes the home look like the picture selected by the customer on the website. It is our constant endeavour to use disruptive technology, data science, and design innovation to bring the best home design experience for customers.

What is the flowchart for the space creation process?

While designing your home should be a fun, exciting experience, — worldwide — it actually results in a ton of frustration. It often entails coordinating with various local vendors, visiting local markets on design-ideas-and-products hunt, paying hefty sums to interior designers for design consultations, and still not finding the right design or installation personnel for your dream project.
Indian customers today work with carpenters, turnkey contractors etc, who offer horrible services, expensive products and ultimately cause a large amount of time and cost overrun. As far as we are concerned, the process starts with a homeowner discovering looks or spaces — by room, price and style. Once they are matched with a design team, it helps them personalise their chosen looks to their layout, style, furniture and material preferences and more using 3D-visualisation tools. Once the order is placed for all the included furniture, decor and services, then the team makes their home look
exactly like the picture in just a matter of weeks.

Making the space personal...

A space can be broken down into several personalisable elements — furniture (which in itself can be personalised by material, finish, upholstery ), decor (soft and hard), walls, floor and services. Each element, in turn, comes with its own sub-categories, which are room or space dependent.

We offer thousands of options and combinations for all these elements to fit a wide range of styles and budgets. The customers can personalise the design by each of these elements to their liking. This results in a home that’s unique and caters to the homeowner’s needs, lifestyle, layout and preferences.

How comfortable are homeowners with online shopping now?

While Indians are comfortable shopping online — the growing gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the e-commerce industry as a whole is a proof in itself — the level of comfort is different for different categories. For high-value purchases, Indians are inclined towards experiential e-commerce and we’ve seen the advent of the discover-online-and-experience-offline trend.

Who is your target clientele?

The home furnishing industry in India is witnessing hyper-growth and a sea-change. Across India, many families are now buying their first homes, getting their existing homes upgraded, or many who’re simply interested in making their homes look beautiful.

In general, there is an increased consciousness of good home design that is created with passion and expertise, and products that look good, are personalised and can be easily acquired.

Our average order value for a complete two BHK home is Rs 12 lakh. Owing to the sheer depth of our catalogue offering, we are able to serve customers whose budget is as low as Rs six lakh for a full home to Rs 60 lakh. The master bedroom, on an average, will cost one Rs 2.2 lakh, including all furniture — bed, bedside tables, accent chair, modular wardrobe, and furnishings such as curtains, rugs, cushions and wall treatment.

The current demand for designing and furnishing processes…

We have 2,00,000 visits on our website each month with a 50% month-over-month (MoM) growth rate. We’ve also seen over 1000% growth in web traffic in the past few months. Livspace already has hundreds of interior design looks and over 25,000 stock keeping units (SKU), which are being personalised by homeowners on an everyday basis.

Does the market differ in different cities?

Each city has its own nuances, consumer personas and style preferences. For example, space saving is always a concern when designing the average home in Mumbai (owing to low average-size of residential apartments). On the other hand, homes being fairly maintenance-friendly is often a requisite in Bengaluru. A trendy Scandinavian-style home will more often than not be requested by a homeowner in Mumbai, whereas a glitzy abode will find favour in a city like Delhi. The average project value also varies, not just between the three cities but also within the cities as well, based on the locations.