Segmentation, Targeting,

Positioning

Urban Ladder

Urban Ladder is a startup based out of Bangalore, India. The

furniture and home decor onlinestore is headed by co-founders
CEOAshish Goel, and COORajiv Srivatsa.
The idea behind Urban Ladder is to make it easier forcustomers
to seek out and buy great furniture and home decor.
It currently offers an eclectic range comprising coffee tables,
side tables, dining tables, balcony sets, book-racks, display
units, wall racks, and a host of other products.
The company is also a private label and makes its own products.
Most products are pre-built. Logistics and services are handled
directly by the company.
It delivers in 29 cities across India, Tier1 and Tier 2.
It started out with pan-India operations in July 2012 but quickly
rolled back to limited cities with a trained delivery and logistics
team because they didnt want the customer experience to
suffer.

Founders
Rajiv
Srivatsa

Ashish Goel

Story behind Urban Ladder

While setting up their homes
in 2010,Ashish Goel and
Rajiv Srivatsa faced
difficulties in getting
furniture. The duo kept
discussing the problem for a
month until they thought of
starting Urban Ladder.
By scaling down before they
scaled up, the three-year-old
Urban Ladder has climbed to
the top of India's online
furniture retail market.

Segmentation

Profile of the Target Customer

Anyone buying a home in the Rs 40-50 lakh

range, will go for furniture in the Rs 4-5 lakh
range, including kitchen. Thats their target
consumer.
Anyone in the renovation cycle, who bought a
house several years ago, might want to re-do a
room or several rooms because they are bored of
it. That is a big second audience.
And a big third audience is anyone moving cities
among the top 30 cities, whos probably married
but have still not bought a home where they are
looking to do-up some part of their house. All
these three are audiences that span across the

Profile of the Target Customer

Demographic: They are well-read, educated, earning

well, between ages of 23-45, who will buy online, and
are used to shopping online.
Psychographic: They are design conscious, socially
aware and active, digitally buy stuff, including lifestyle
purchases from the likes of Myntra or Jabong.
Behavioral: They are willing to buy big ticket items at
a single click and are finding it far more convenient to
shop online, as it ensures them to check out how the
furniture would look in their home settings.
During the festive and wedding season, there is an
impressive surge in the number of buyers as this is the
time when people like to renovate their homes and buy
new furniture.

Targeting

Evaluating Market Segment:

Segment size and growth

Furniture and Furnishings market in India has been

growing at a compounded annual rate of 6-8%.
80% of this market is unorganized, with a large
number of unbranded players and local carpenters.
The branded organized retail segment account for
15% of the market and 0.5% of the market is
captured by online retailers, so there is significant
headroom for Urban Ladder to grow.
Indias furniture market is estimated at $15-20
billion (Rs.93,000-1,24,000 Cr.) in India alone.
The furniture category is big and offers a great
opportunity as there isnt a single player who is
valued for more than $100 million.

Segment Structural Attractiveness:

Level of Competition

Horizontal players: Flipkart,

Snapdeal, Myntra, Amazon
(These players have 50 times
their traffic.)
Vertical Players: Pepperfry (set
up in January 2012), FabFurnish
(March 2012) and HouseFull
(August 2006) and Zansaar.com
Offline Players: Home Town,
Lifestyle Home Centre, Godrej
Interio, Fab India, Style Spa, DLF
Pure, Evok (Hindware)
The company is gearing up to
face Ikea, the Swedish
furniture and home decor
giant, which is expected to start
operating in India by 2016.

Segment Structural Attractiveness:

Company Objectives and Resources

Unlike competitors which operate as marketplaces, Urban

Ladder own processes end-to-end, which means they control
everything from selection of wood and designing the
furniture to the delivery of the purchase.
While competitors offer wide product ranges, particularly in
home dcor, they have stuck to a smaller offering and kept
inventory light, using buying behaviour data to determine
stock keeping units (SKU) and cross-promote products.
Strong supply chain understanding and distinctive product
differentiates them vis a vis their competitors. Furniture is a
complex product which the horizontal players take as one
more category, but, Urban Ladder works on design, sourcing
and quality of product.
Today they have the highest consumer satisfaction score in
the industry.

Targeting Digitally Savvy, Urbane and

Design Concious Niche Audience through
technology

To cater to the digitally savvy, urbane, design concious TG, Urban

Ladder has launched three apps Urban Storage, Living Spaces
and Core Catalogue app, through which it provides home trials,
consultation and augmented reality of 5,000+ furniture.
Furniture is a complicated product to buy. Its a high touch and
feel product, and is non-standard. Its also a higher ticket
purchase than most other purchases. The front-end experience
of the website and mobile apps help the consumers easily
discover, navigate and browse the selection of products.
It also helps consumers get true and rich information around
each product, and make them get a sense of both how the
product looks and fits in their house. Last but not the least it
gives them a sense of trust.
Thus, the company is investing a lot on mobile technologies to
provide a great experience on areas like visualisation,
personalisation and app development to target its chosen

Targeting their Segments through Technology

Engaging and
interactive mobile
apps.

Augmented Reality: Solved

the problem of 'How does the
furniture look inside my house
for the customer.

Targeting for Mattress

Targeting Kids

Urban Ladder launched their all new range of furniture, just for kids!
Coloured in whimsical, pastel hues & named after childrens favourite
cartoon characters, theyre sure theres never going to be another
dull moment with your kids furniture.

POSITIONING

Positioning

Ashish Goyal, Founder wants Urban Ladder to be

the reason why homes across India look
beautiful.
They intend to be a complete home solutions provider in
the coming days. They want to strengthen their dcor
portfolio to graduate from an online furniture store to a
one-stop home furnishings provider.
To position themselves, Urban Ladder had only recently
jumped into TV, but its initial efforts were focused on
broad-reaching demography.
Founders believe organic growth coupled with social
media marketing and positive word-of-mouth are
sufficient for them.

Urban Ladder visualizes evolution of a

beautiful home

These films share stories of how

the first piece of furniture
customers bought from Urban
Ladder made them re-imagine a
space and led them to buy more
of your products. The narrative
brings out the consumer context
-- the role of furniture in creating
a beautiful home and the
experiences that follow

Urban Ladder aims to bring people

closer

Campaign, revolves around the

thought that home is where people
connect with each other, and
furniture plays an important role in
it. The brand campaign brings you
closer aims to highlight this
warmth,
and
the
emotional
undertones that Urban Ladder
adds to a home, with only a subtle

Digital Campaign- Creature

Comforts
Furniture
portal
Urban
Ladder
has
positioned
itself as urbane, suave and
sophisticated.

The new online campaign has 4 short

videos featuring pets, and are aptly
titled
Creature
Comforts.
The
campaign talks about the different
services offered by Urban such as Free
Delivery and Assembly, Interest Free
EMIs, Easy Replacement and Returns
and Cash or Card on delivery are
depicted
through
pets
in
the

CSR Initiative
Urban Ladder has from the very start positioned itself as a
socially responsible company.
When a customer chooses the exchange offer on the Urban
Ladder website, he/she receives a 10% discount on the new
purchase.
The Urban Ladder team picks up the old furniture to ensure
it is donated to someone in need. Through Milaap, Urban
Ladder has partnered with 11 NGOs across the city who will
receive the old furniture.These NGOs contribute towards
women empowerment and are involved in education,
health and community development.
The initiative provides an opportunity for customers to
donate their old furniture. At the same time, it ensures a
low-cost option for an individual in the lower strata of the

Future Outlook

The
company
is
also
setting
up
a
comprehensive team of design consultants to
advise consumers on furniture purchases and
doing up their homes, a service offered by
smaller rivals HomeLane and Livspace.
Home buyers will be the initial targets for the
new categories.
They (home buyers) will give us the keys to
their houses and then 15 to 20 days later, allow
us to give them the experience of walking into
their dream home.

Thank You