Cityfurnish raises $5M in Series A funding round led by Gmail and YouTube founders

Online furniture and consumer appliances rental company Cityfurnish has raised $5 million from a clutch of investors in its Series round of equity financing.The fund raising round, which closed last month, saw participation from Paul Buchheit, founder of Gmail, the world’s largestemail service, Steve Chen, the co-founder of video sharing platform YouTube, Global Founders Capital, Venture Highway, Soma Capital, SCM Advisors and Boomerang Ventures.
A number of high net-worth individuals and angel investors, whose names were not disclosed, have also participated in the latest round, according to Cityfurnish co-founder Neerav Jain.
This is the first institutional round of funding undertaken by the company, which had previously raised Rs 3.9 crore in angel funding in 2016-17 from the likes of Jitendra Gupta, managing director of Naspers-owned payments major PayU, among others.
“We’re going to focus on the supply side, brand building, and getting into newer categories…We are also going to be further investing in operations and technology, while also spending some of the proceeds on product development,” Jain told ET.Founded in September 2015 by Jain and Saurabh Gupta, Cityfurnish offers furniture, furnishings, appliances and fitness equipment, and has entered the commercial and hospitality segments as well. The company is also in the process of launching a furniture subscription programme, which will be based on a pay-as-you-go model, with no minimum commitments.
“Today’s generation is drawn towards on-demand services that will give them access to items without bearing the burden of ownership. We believe that CityFurnish is poised to stand out in
this large market opportunity and we are excited to partner with them in their vision of ‘owning less and living more,” Samir Sood, founder at Venture Highway, said in a statement.
The company, which competes with the likes of Lightbox-backed Furlenco and Accel Partners and Chirate Ventures-backed RentoMojo, has targeted being present in 14 cities by 2020. It is currently present in the National Capital Region, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune.
“CityFurnish is leading the trend of redefining ownership and let’s customers rent best in class furniture without a lot of downside of the buying and transporting such expensive items,” Michael Ma of Liquid2 Ventures, said.