DesignCafe raises Rs 200 crore from WestBridge Capital

Online interior design platform DesignCafe has closed a Rs 200-crore equity-financing round led by home-grown private equity firm WestBridge Capital. The transaction marks a rare venture capital-style investment by WestBridge which has so far largely preferred to place public market-focused bets.

Proceeds from the investment will be used by DesignCafe to expand its footprints in the country, its cofounder, Shezaan Bhojani, said in an email response to ET.

The financing round also saw participation from existing investor Fireside Ventures, the early-stage, consumer-focused venture set up by former Helion Venture Advisors Partners’ managing director Kanwaljit Singh. Boutique investment bank Sprout Capital acted as the exclusive advisor to the deal.

“We are very pleased to have WestBridge, one of the leading PE investors in India, join the Design Cafe team. We are also excited to strengthen our already close relationship with existing investor Fireside Ventures, who is also participating in this round,” Bhojani said in the statement.

DesignCafe, started by architect duo Bhojani and Gita Ramanan in 2015, currently operates out of Bengaluru, but plans to expand to six cities, including Mumbai, the Delhi National Capital region and Hyderabad over the course of 2019. It competes with the likes of TPG Growth and Goldman Sachs-backed Livspace.

The latest round comes about 15 months after DesignCafe was reported to have raised an undisclosed sum in a round led by Fireside Ventures, along with early-stage investors, including Apurva Salarpuria and Siddharth Pansari.

“We have been impressed with DesignCafe’s rapid scaling up and initial success. Their high customer satisfaction rate is an excellent achievement and is a testimony to the company’s deep domain expertise in this sector, hard work and good business judgment,” Sandeep Singhal, managing partner, WestBridge Capital, said.

WestBridge Capital is also an investor in Singh’s Fireside Ventures.

“DesignCafe operates in a large white space and has built a solution that caters to a large target audience. Gita and Shezaan come with significant design experience which helps them understand consumer need better,” Fireside Ventures’ Singh said.

For WestBridge Capital, the investment in DesignCafe is a rare one, having being primarily regarded as one of the biggest independent India-centric PE funds with a crossover focus on public and private investment thesis.

The investment firm, which manages assets of about $2 billion, has, however, placed a few bets in the startup space in 2018, having led a Rs 100-crore investment round in workplace solutions provider IndiQube in June.

More recently, Safecrop Holdings, a consortium of WestBridge AIF, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Madison Capital, signed definitive agreements with the shareholders of Star Health & Allied Insurance Co to purchase their stock in the country’s largest independent health insurer at a valuation of Rs 6,500 crore.