Home interior company HomeLane may acquire smaller rival DesignCafe
DesignCafe is in the process of merging with its bigger rival HomeLane in a stock-swap deal, multiple people aware of the development told ET.
The deal will value DesignCafe at about Rs 500 crore, or about $60 million, and HomeLane at $360 million, or about 3,000 crore, one of the sources said.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteIndian School of BusinessISB Product ManagementVisitMITMIT Technology Leadership and InnovationVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Professional Certificate in Product ManagementVisitThe development will bring about a consolidation in the home services industry amid a funding freeze in the technology industry over the past two years.
The two Bengaluru-based startups share a common investor in WestBridge Capital. While HomeLane has raised a total of $115 million since inception, DesignCafe has raised $30 million. The latter had last raised around $5 million from WestBridge Capital along with investment trust and venture debt fund Alteria Capital in March 2023.
DesignCafe had been struggling to raise a new round for several months, people cited above said.
“We cannot respond to speculation and rumours and this is unfortunately just that,” Srikanth Iyer, founder and CEO of HomeLane, said.
Gita Ramanan, founder and CEO of DesignCafe, too, refused to comment on “market speculation and rumours”.
WestBridge Capital did not respond to ET’s email query till press time Sunday.
After the merger, the firms aim to generate a combined earnings before
