HomeLane.com acquires virtual tech startup Doowup for an undisclosed amount

HomeLane.com, an online home solutions provider of modular kitchen and other home furnishing solutions, today announced that it acquired Doowup for an undisclosed amount. Doowup is a tech startup that provides hyper-realistic, personalised home decor “Shop-the-Look” experience. As per the terms of the acquisition, Doowup’s founding team will join HomeLane.

Doowup, which was founded in May 2014, consider their strengths to lie in their IP and innovations in interactive 3D experiences. Its 'Shop-the-look' platform enables consumers to browse through and customise a host of curated designer looks in the context of their own homes. Consumers can interact with these experiences across web, mobile, and virtual reality mediums.

Doowup’s Founder, Vivek Seetharaman, will be joining HomeLane as their Chief Innovation Officer. He has a background of over 12 years in visualisation technology and product engineering domains. Prior to founding Doowup, he was heading engineering for Sourcebits' product vertical and helped scale up Sourcebits’ Wandake Game Studios.

Srikanth Iyer co-founded HomeLane.com in 2014 along with Rama Harinath after going through the hassles of furnishing his own house. They have presence in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, and Kochi and claim to be executing more than 100 projects a month. They offer technology-based personalized home furnishing designs to customers through access to experienced panel of interior designers, who consult customers to come up with customized designs for their houses at no extra cost. Commenting on the acquisition Srikanth said,"Our fundamental goal at HomeLane is to make home furnishing an enjoyably, simple, and time-efficient experience for all new homebuyers. Doowup adds new capabilities and sets us up nicely for achieving our business goals."

Earlier this year in February, HomeLane.com announced that it had raised $4.5 M in a Series A funding from Sequoia Capital and Aarin Capital. In June they launched Kaleido, a virtual reality headset, to allow customer to visualise how the final kitchen or living room set-up would look like after furnishing.

On assuming his new position as Homelane, Vivek said, “I am delighted to join forces with Srikanth and hope that with Doowup’s added expertise, together we are able to make furnishing a more predictable and trustworthy experience.”

Sector overview

The home and furnishing industry is a huge sector in terms of the market size. Furniture alone is estimated to be a $20 billion industry. There has been a lot of activity in this space in India in the recent past. Just a week ago, Livspace which raised $4.6M Series A funding, acquired YoFloor for an undisclosed amount. Other big players in the home and furnishing sector are UrbanLadder, backed by investors like Ratan Tata, Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, and Kalaari Capital; Fabfurnish, backed by Rocket Internet and Kinnevik; and PepperFry, which raised $15M in their Series C round led by Bertelsmann India Investments.

Website: HomeLane.com

Related read from March 2015: Home and furnishing segment in Indian e-commerce prepares for consolidation