This Gurugram-based startup looks to spruce up kids’ spaces with comfortable, customised, colourful furnishing
Gurugram-based startup Boingg! provides furniture and décor products for children’s rooms, including beds, nursery fittings, study tables, storage, and soft furnishings.
What does the word or sound ‘Boingg!’ bring to one’s mind? Probably, the happy sound of children jumping on the bed, having a blast?
This is something Neha Indoria’s daughter too loves to do. A few years ago, while Neha (37) was setting up her young daughter’s room, she realised the absolute dearth of good furniture for children that was safe, not too costly, and yet fantastic to look at.
“The market offerings were, and still are, expensive, imported furniture or custom, made-to-order or cheap, plastic, and low-quality. We wanted to create a solution that fills this gap, and provides for the upwardly mobile young parents who want good quality, unique designs, and furniture that fit their needs, without having to bear sky-high prices,” says Neha.
Dhruvan Barar and Neha Indoria
Boingg! emerged from the existing manufacturing set-up of ‘Couched’, a venture started by Neha and her brother-in-law, Dhruvan Barar (33) in 2015. Couched creates furniture leasing solutions for budget service housing companies.
As this company manufactured its solutions in-house, the duo would get a lot of queries for custom residential furniture, a majority of which were for children’s needs. On doing some research, they realised that the children’s furniture category was almost completely unaddressed in the mid-premium segment.
This led to the birth of Boingg! in February 2019 after a year and half of groundwork. Based in Gurugram, Boingg! offers an exclusive range of furniture for children. The brand aims to help parents create independent and attractive spaces for their children.
The offerings
The startup provides almost every kind of furniture and décor product one may need for their children’s rooms such as beds, nursery fittings, study tables, storage, décor, and soft furnishings. The price range starts from Rs 2,000 and goes up till Rs 85,000.
Says Dhruvan,
“Our ideal customer is a young couple with kids aged between two and eight. We cater to parents who have experienced the quality and design that is available internationally and are looking for similar good quality products without having to pay through their nose.”
Apart from catering directly to customers, Boingg! has partnered with online furniture platforms Pepperfry, Flipkart, and Livspace. The company is also building its offline sales channels to create physical touchpoints, with its first retail store set to open in M.G Road, Delhi in the first week of December.
The startup takes direct orders for all its products from Delhi-NCR through its website. Some of its pre-assembled units are also being shipped across the country. All its products are available pan India through its platform partners, Pepperfry, Livspace, and Flipkart.
“For all the direct orders, Boingg! offers its customers the ability to adjust the size and colour as per their liking and/or add storage where possible. All such orders are processed offline, and manufactured on a made-to-order basis. The manufacturing has been purpose built with woodworking machinery to ensure the assembly line is not disrupted. To further increase the outreach of this model, we are in the process of tying up with partners to open brand outlets and help customers order easily,” says Dhruvan.
For its online channel partners, Boingg! offers a fixed configuration of its products. The founders share that the team is striving to consistently maintain a minimum stock level to cater to the orders within optimum delivery periods. According to Neha,
“We have to balance the stock level and our cash-flows in a delicate manner. We are continuously gathering data on orders, and have set up back-end inventory management to ensure availability.”
Around 40 percent of Boingg!’s revenue is generated through direct orders, and the rest through its platform partners.
The team
After completing his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from the International Institute of Information Technology, Dhruvan went on to pursue his MBA at IIM Kozhikode. He has nearly five years of experience across diverse industries and companies. Starting as an ASM in Marico, he moved on to Quikr as a Senior Associate reporting to the CFO where he was in charge of sales analytics, customer service, product development, sales strategy, and category management.
Neha, on the other hand, before starting Couched on her own in 2015, had spent about ten years in the corporate world, starting with HSBC right after her MBA from IMI, New Delhi. She had also worked in Infosys prior to starting up.
Today, the core management team of Boingg! has four members, working with a 45-strong team of skilled craftsmen, floor managers/ supervisors, and legal and finance personnel.
Racking up the numbers
According to Statista, the furniture and homeware market stands at $2,041 million in 2019. This is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.2 percent until 2023.
Dhruvan says that the annual children’s furniture market is estimated to be at about Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000 crore, with almost 85 percent of it being served by the unorganised sector.
Players such as Alex Daisy, Lycka, Adona, Urge, and Habios have sprouted up in recent years, with both online and offline channels, apart from the big ecommerce players like Flipkart, Amazon, and Pepperfry.
The founders claim that every piece at Boingg! is designed and manufactured in-house at its factory set-up in Gurgaon with utmost care.
Elaborating on the startup’s USP, Neha says,
“Our designs are fun, functional, and unique among what is currently offered in the market, thus making for perfect products for kids as well as parents. Owing to our in-house manufacturing, we are able to offer the ability to adjust the size and colour as per the customer’s liking and the option of adding storage to our designs where possible. Additionally, we make sure every piece is safe for kids to use and is tested for durability.”
She adds that the edges of every product and the corners rounded. Only non-toxic paint, and that too in minimal quantity, is used and the upholstery is done with 100-percent cotton fabric.
Though the company’s customer base is spread across India, the founders say that Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru are the key markets for them. The platform also has seen a lot of traction from Tier I and II cities in the west and south.
“Within 10 months in business, we are achieving about five sales per day with an average ticket size of 20,000. We have witnessed growth of almost 15 percent month-on-month since our launch. We are operationally profitable and hope to increase this percentage by bringing down production costs with better machinery and driving up our direct sales numbers,” says Dhruvan.
Bootstrapped to date, Boingg! is planning to further expand and streamline its manufacturing and logistics capabilities and is exploring third-party funding for the same. “We have started discussions with some investors and hope to raise our first round of investments in the first quarter of 2020,” says Neha.
(Edited by Athirupa Geetha Manichandar)
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