South Korean home furnishing and remodeling unicorn raises new round of funding from prominent global investors to power the global growth of its groundbreaking lifestyle platform
oHouse, the visionary lifestyle platform enabling customers to easily source and purchase goods for their homes, today announced the raise of $182 million in series D funding, from a series of prominent global investors, including SoftBank Ventures Asia, BRV Capital Management, Vertex Growth which is anchored by Temasek-backed Vertex Holdings, BOND, Korea Development Bank, IMM Investment and Mirae Asset Capital amongst others.
“Eight years ago, oHouse was simply a community of people sharing interior design content with one another,” said Seungjae Lee, Founder and CEO of oHouse. “Today, we’ve grown into a global platform that brings users together to inspire one another to transform their lives. We’re creating solutions that can help our global user base with every design and style related challenge that they’re facing, whether it be remodeling a bathroom, planning a dinner party or setting-up a home theater system.”
By redefining how people decorate their homes, oHouse is powering innovation in the global interior design market. The company combines community-driven content with a seamless commerce experience, allowing customers to find inspiration for their homes, discover new products, and purchase interior décor, furniture, and appliances directly from the oHouse app.
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“oHouse is not only transforming the home furnishing industry but also reshaping the ecommerce customer experience. We are thrilled to partner with the company’s innovative team to help oHouse advance towards its next chapter of growth”
Every seven seconds, a furniture item is purchased on the oHouse platform, helping to drive annualized gross merchandise volume to a record $1.7 billion. Having just expanded into new sub-verticals, oHouse now provides a suite of home services, including home remodeling, moving, installation and repair.
The next step for the global brand is to venture deeper into the lifestyle segment, which will include expanding its team internationally. oHouse will be building out its marketing, sales and product teams in key markets throughout the world, including appointing a head of US expansion.
Efforts to grow the team will help to advance the company’s global expansion plans. oHouse recently acquired Hipvan, an online furniture platform in Singapore, which will help oHouse expand its presence throughout Southeast Asia. Other priority markets include the United States and Western Europe.
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Beyond growing into new markets, oHouse plans to incorporate machine learning and augmented reality (AR) functionality into its platform, which will completely transform the way users and brands leverage the platform to create content, build community and buy and sell products and services. The continued development of its logistics infrastructure is another key area of focus for the brand as it looks to expand into new categories within the lifestyle arena.
“oHouse is not only transforming the home furnishing industry but also reshaping the ecommerce customer experience. We are thrilled to partner with the company’s innovative team to help oHouse advance towards its next chapter of growth,” said JP Lee, CEO of SoftBank Ventures Asia.
