This Entrepreneur is Taking Family Business to New Scale with Tech

The Indian furniture industry is huge and is ranked as the fifth largest market in the world with big players like Urban Ladder & Pepperfry already running a good business in tier 1 & 2 cities compared to small towns.

In fact, according to a recently published report India Furniture Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2019, by TechSci Research, the market is projected to cross $32 billion by 2019.

It is expected to grow at a rapid pace due to rising disposable income, expanding the middle class and a growing number of urban households.

Saraf Furniture, ( an online retailer selling the best solid Sheesham wooden furniture for homes and offices ) is a great example of taking traditional businesses to new heights with tech.

Saraf Furniture started their journey 40 years ago with the trading of Sheesham wood furniture to local merchandisers and four years back they introduced INSARAF.com as an e-commerce website to leverage their expertise of furniture designing and styling to manufacture bespoke furniture that comes with a lifetime warranty.

CEO & Founder, Raghunandan is carrying the legacy of providing the best quality Sheesham wood furniture to the audience with Saraf Furniture. He shared his vision and story with team Bizztor in an exclusive Interview.

How it was Started:
Hailing from Sadarshahar, my tryst with the furniture trade dates back to my school days when I used to accompany my father in all his business meetings, client interactions, and overseas trade shows.

Thanks to our family business, I was well acquainted with the furniture trade. Growing up, I developed a strong inclination towards technology and organizing and after completing my MBA from the prestigious SRCC, I moved back to my hometown Sadarshahr in Rajasthan to join the family business. However, the growing desire to revamp the traditional furniture exports business urged me to start Saraf Furniture.

I was really fascinated by the idea of being able to sell furniture through the online medium where I realized it was a huge growing market. I decided to bring back the shine on our decade-old family furniture business.

As the Founder and CEO of Saraf Furniture, I have designed and developed its user-friendly website and app on my own with the intention of making elegant, minimally-designed furniture accessible to the masses at value-driven prices.

Problem:
India’s furniture sector is reportedly 90 percent unorganised. In this age of contemporary furniture, consumers prefer customized furniture along with recommendations and advice from experts.

While several brands have entered the market to organise it and offer this convenience to buyers through the power of the internet, customers still hesitate to make online advance payments for buying furniture online.

We understand this consumer hesitance and focus on offering easy financing options and EMIs to combat this issue.

Moreover, customers in doubt can experience the furniture by visiting our brick and mortar experiential stores.

While delivery was yet another challenge consumers of online furniture platforms were facing, we managed to overcome that issue by setting up a Hub & Spoke model wherein the furniture is shipped to the hub from the manufacturing warehouse and distributed to the relevant center from there.

Saraf Furniture banks on its features like the exclusivity of Sheesham wood furniture, easy financing options, product customisation, lifetime termite resistant warranty, free shipping all over India, international shipping to create a niche in the market.

Future Plans:
In fact, according to a recently published report India Furniture Market Forecast and Opportunities, 2019, by TechSci Research, the market is projected to cross $32 billion by 2019.

It is expected to grow at a rapid pace due to rising disposable income, expanding the middle class and a growing number of urban households.

Being a product-focused brand, we are planning to expand our offline footprint across the country by opening more experience centres in other metros like Chennai and Mumbai, as well as tier-1 and tier-2 cities.

Currently, we already have 5 operational centres and we are working towards increasing the count by a total of 10 by the end of 2019.