HipVan raises S$4.7m in venture capital funding

[CityFarmer]

The IKEA will stand still, to allow the "next IKEA" to prosperous? I seldom shop in IKEA, but there is IKEA online too. I am not sure what will the HipVan do better than IKEA?

HipVan raises S$4.7m in venture capital funding

SINGAPORE — Homegrown furniture and home accessories online retailer HipVan has landed S$4.7 million in Series A funding, led by Singapore-based venture capital firm Golden Gate Ventures, among other investors.

This is the second funding round this week by Golden Gate Ventures, and its single largest investment to date. On Tuesday, Golden Gate Ventures also revealed it was part of a S$2.8 million series A funding round for personal finance portal MoneySmart.sg, another Singapore start-up.

Other companies that Golden Gate Ventures has invested in include the online grocery store Redmart, consumer-to-consumer shopping app Carousell and the property portal 99.co.

HipVan chief executive Danny Tan said he wants to build the “next IKEA” over the Internet, highlighting the opportunities in online furniture retailing.

He noted that HipVan, which was founded in 2013, sees more than 150,000 online shoppers at its store every month.

“The biggest opportunities in e-commerce today target the emerging segment of Internet savvy consumers in their late 20s onwards with a high disposable income,” Mr Tan said.

“We believe this is the perfect time to build ‘the next IKEA’ online with a much wider product selection, and a more efficient business model that lets us pass on savings to our customers.”
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http://www.todayonline.com/tech/hipvan-r...epage=true

[weijian]

The IKEA experience and its 'proprietary' designs most probably will keep this startup at bay.

[LocalOptimal]

I myself am shopping for furniture at my new house and came across this neat shoe cabinet.

http://www.hipvan.com/products/koja-six-...estsellers

Looks good? But the price kind of scared me off. (instead of too expensive, i find it toooo cheap to be true.)

I guess there's still resistance to new players in the furniture market. There are other more established (other than ikea) out there such as Castlery, Forty-two, etc.

What I find missing in this site is a lack of reviews (not even from external googling) and a lack of a external showroom for me to physically get a feel of what I am buying into.

[sgpunter]

I have bought small things from Hipvan before and the experience has been good.

Hard to please everybody. Price too expensive, people complain, price too cheap, people find product quality dubious.

Anyway from a consumer's perspective, I'm happy as I get more options.

[CityFarmer]

I myself am shopping for furniture at my new house and came across this neat shoe cabinet.

http://www.hipvan.com/products/koja-six-...estsellers

Looks good? But the price kind of scared me off. (instead of too expensive, i find it toooo cheap to be true.)

I guess there's still resistance to new players in the furniture market. There are other more established (other than ikea) out there such as Castlery, Forty-two, etc.

What I find missing in this site is a lack of reviews (not even from external googling) and a lack of a external showroom for me to physically get a feel of what I am buying into.

Since I have retailer in my portfolio, I have made the "online shopping" as one of my study topic. The combination of physical cum virtual online shops, seems a optimum choice for retailers. The arguments are

- Not all shoppers likes online shopping, due to various reasons, including the subjective individual preferences. The distribution seems pretty even, thus make either one equally important to retailers.
- Even among the same online group, there are still needs to physically inspect the item, from time to time.

(sharing a view)