Interior Dreams Brought to Life: The Livspace Marketing Strategy

Livspace is one of India’s leading home interior and renovation platforms. Founded in 2014, the company brings together interior designers, contractors, and homeowners to provide end-to-end interior design and remodeling services. In just a few years, Livspace has established itself as a major player in the home interior industry.

About Livspace

Livspace was launched in Bengaluru by Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma. The goal was to disrupt the fragmented and unorganized home interiors and renovation industry in India by providing a technology-enabled platform. Livspace connects homeowners with the country’s best interior designers and contractors to deliver high-quality, affordable services.

What’s New with Livspace?

In the past year, Livspace has expanded to 8 major cities in India. The company received $70 million in Series C funding in 2019, one of the largest funding rounds for an interior design startup. Livspace continues to innovate with interactive 3D design tools, personalized design recommendations powered by AI, and project management software to improve transparency and efficiency.

Getting to Know the Livspace Customer

Livspace targets urban homeowners looking to remodel or redecorate their homes. Their customers value beautiful, functional living spaces but find the renovation process complex and stressful. Livspace makes it easy by managing the entire project end-to-end. Key customer personas include:

The Metropolitan Family: A dual-income urban couple with kids looking to renovate their apartment. They desire modern, fuss-free interiors.
The Sophisticated Elites: Successful singles or DINKs (dual income, no kids) focused on investing in their personal habitats. Their homes express their lifestyle and values.

Marketing Mix

Livspace has crafted an integrated offline and online marketing strategy targeting homeowners looking to remodel, renovate, or simply redecorate their living spaces.

Product Strategy: A One-Stop Shop for Home Interiors

The company provides a one-stop shop for all home interior needs – design services, furnishings, materials, and installation and construction contractors. For homeowners overwhelmed by navigating between interior designers, dealers, carpenters, and plumbers, Livspace simplifies things by managing the entire process end-to-end.

The design offers range from basic layout consultations and customized interiors for a room or two right up to luxury villa renovations involving floor extension and façade changes. Consumers can browse from a curated collection of materials, modular storage solutions, furniture, fixtures, and more when visualizing their spaces during design. These are of reliable quality and are already standardized to control costs through bulk sourcing. Where needed, Livspace sources specialized, premium fittings and works with the homeowner’s specifications.

During execution, the company handles contractor scheduling, quality supervision, payments, and more – areas that typically frustrate customers. Robust project management enables timely completion. By plugging gaps in India’s fragmented interior design industry through an integrated model, Livspace aims to acquire and delight homeowners under one roof.

Price Strategy: Making Luxury Affordable

Pricing is central to Livspace’s value proposition. For the quality of personalized design services and interiors delivered, Livspace offers compelling value. Their strategy is premised on acquiring middle-income homeowners who aspire to beautifully furnished homes but perceive high-end interior design as unaffordable and stressful.

Livspace brings down prices through process standardization, technology optimization, and demand aggregation. Design costs start from as low as Rs. 499 for basic room layouts and go up to Rs 1500-2000 per square foot for more comprehensive renovations. Their revenue model also includes margins made on supplying interior materials and fittings.

Promotions: Catchy Campaigns + Digital First

Livspace invests heavily in digital as its primary demand generation channel, including SEO, content marketing, and social media promotions. But what give the brand recall are innovative mass media and outdoor campaigns like “Don’t Try This At Home” – positioning DIY as risky, complex interior projects best left to professionals like Livspace. Such bold, humorous communication capturing home improvement frustrations gets conversations started around the brand.

Place Strategy: Accessible Pan-India – Thanks to E-commerce

As an e-commerce-enabled platform, Livspace services are accessible to homeowners across India’s metro and tier 1 regions. This allows for concentrating design and supply chain resources to achieve efficiencies that are unviable for brick-and-mortar players.

Centralized design facilities coupled with Modular Kitchen and Shelf IT standardization improves productivity and eliminates region-specific contractor dependence. While competitors take weeks of problem-solving on site, Livspace leverages pre-project 3D modelling and RFQ bidding to optimize costs for customers upfront. Managing expectations while bringing the best of offline customization and online standardization is core to their market positioning.

Competitor Analysis

Livspace competes in the home interiors and renovation market with traditional brick-and-mortar players as well as newer startups leveraging technology and e-commerce.

Key competitors include:

Interior Prakash – A Bangalore-based firm providing luxury interior design services for over 15 years. Known for contemporary designs optimized for India’s climate. Caters mainly to high-net-worth individuals and corporate clients willing to spend generously on branded fittings and imported materials to create statement residences.
HomeLane – A Bangalore founded startup offering tech-enabled interior design services across major Indian cities. Well-funded and rapidly expanding. HomeLane provides design visualization, standardization through modular components and transparent pricing. Targets middle and upper-middle-class homeowners looking for predictable outcomes.
Nestopia – A direct-to-consumer brand with a curated range of modular furniture and furnishing focused on small space living. Very active on social media like Instagram and Pinterest. Positioned as a lower-cost, youthful brand serving young urban Indians setting up their starter homes.

While vastly different in their offerings, what connects these brands is a keen focus on serving the different interior design needs of Indian consumers by eliminating opacity and creating value. Livspace competes through a hybrid model encompassing the best of all.

Marketing Strategy Livspace’s marketing strategy centers around three pillars:

Stand Out with Creative Campaigns

From the witty “Don’t Try This At Home” ads to the controversial “Our Way or the Highway” billboards, Livspace invests in edgy and innovative campaigns that spark interest.

Own the Customer’s Interior Design Journey

Livspace aims to lock in customers early via entry-level services. Excellent customer experience helps upsell larger, higher-margin projects.

Reduce Friction with Technology

Leveraging technology at every step – online payments, 3D design tools, vendor management software etc. – results in transparency, efficiency and cost savings that helps win business.

The Way Forward

With a sharp customer-focused approach backed by technology and creative marketing, Livspace has emerged as a leading disruptor in the interior design industry. But competition is heating up. Maintaining the momentum and scaling fast while delighting customers will be key to long-term dominance for this promising startup.