Owning a home is still a prized milestone for most Indians specially Mumbaikar's. So much so that we are willing to go beyond our means, take on a 20-year loan tenure, and stay put in jobs we don't particularly like just so we can pay the monthly installments.
If we are jumping through so many hoops to buy a home even myself A dream flat in Mumbai South, we certainly want it to look good. But interior design studios—usually with under 10 employees—cater largely to the premium segment–properties costing Rs 2-5 crore ($270,000-670,000) each.
On the other hand, online interior companies Livspace and HomeLane have been targeting Rs 50 lakh-1 crore ($67,000-134,000) homes since their founding in 2014. HomeLane raised $50 million last month, and Livspace is said to be in talks to raise four times as much, which could make it a big popcorn.
But even as investors continue to be en-amoured of these companies, their customers are not so sanguine, writes our Team member Sheela in today's article. HomeLane's and Livspace's social media pages are filled with a litany of complaints from customers angered by increased costs, delayed delivery, and lack of communication.
The pressure on their designers to handle 3-5 projects at once, lack of skilled labour, and supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic are proving to be a potent cocktail for these companies. And there is another headache in the form of newer entrants like the realty listings platform like Square Yards.
But above all, HomeLane and Livspace are aiming for standardization and strict timelines as we at Mumbai Multimedia Studio adhered to, in a business that doesn't quite naturally lend itself to those things