Used furniture and appliances platform Zefo, which operates as gozefo.com, has raised INR 60 Cr. (about USD 9 million) in a Series B round from Sequoia Capital India, Helion Venture Partners and Beenext Pte. Ltd, the company said in a statement.
The Bengaluru-based company will use the money to widen operations, improve customer care, expand inventory and hire fresh talent, said, CEO Rohit Subramanian.
Zefo, owned by Zero Effort Technologies Pvt. Ltd started off selling used furniture and home appliances in 2015. It now operates in Bengaluru, Mysore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Mumbai.
More than half of inventory is sourced from consumers who sell used products. It also sources furniture from e-commerce marketplaces like Flipkart, Amazon, UrbanLadder and Pepperfry. Customers on these platforms exchange their old furniture and appliances in return for new products, while the used products go directly to Zefo.
The company refurbishes and repairs the sourced furniture and appliances, and sells it on its platform. According to Ramasubramanian, the second-hand market is a low-trust market, and Zefo is trying to solve it by bringing convenience to used goods buyers by investing in customer care and refurbishing.
“Our core focus of offering a standardised, transparent, high-trust and convenient way for people to buy and sell their products online has helped us establish our presence as the preferred used goods marketplace in the country. We will continue to strengthen these aspects with focus on technology and operations to further enhance our customer experience,” Ramasubramanian said in a statement.
The start-up claims to have grown from around 25,000 customers in 2016 to about 150,000 customers currently. Revenues are growing 30% every month.
(Source: www.livemint.com)
Leave a Reply