Seungjae Lee, a former chemical and electrical engineer, turned his passion for interior design into the oHouse content sharing platform. Now the startup is one of the largest lifestyle apps in Korea with a valuation of about $1.6 billion.
The inspiration behind Korea’s largest decor and lifestyle platform came during a “destiny day” for oHouse founder and CEO Seungjae Lee, who was visiting a friend’s house when he fell in love with the design of interiors.
“I had looked at a lot of architecture photos on Pinterest and felt that beautiful houses were only possible in the Western world,” says Lee from oHouse’s Seoul office, during a video interview with Forbes. “When I visit [my friend’s] home, I realized that it was possible in Korea… I thought that these kinds of places could improve people’s lives.”
Lee, 34, launched oHouse in 2014 after graduating in chemical and electrical engineering from Seoul National University. He started as a community for sharing interior design ideas, evoking the awe he felt exploring his friend’s well-designed rooms. The app is now one of the most popular on the Internet in Korea, with more than 20 million downloads, nearly half of Korea’s total population, and 10 million monthly active users on the app and website, according to the company. oHouse array, Bucketplace.
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Earlier in May, oHouse closed a $182 million Series D round, bringing the total amount of financing in the company to $261.2 million. With the new capital, the startup confirmed its roughly $1.6 billion valuation to Forbes, making it the latest Korean company to gain unicorn status after RIDI, a webcomic platform, completed a $99 funding round. .4 million dollars in March.
Investors in oHouse’s latest round include Korea Development Bank, billionaire Park Hyeon-joo’s Mirae Asset Capital, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son’s venture arm of SoftBank Group, and Singapore state-owned investor Temasek Holdings’ Vertex Growth. .
“oHouse is not only transforming the home furnishings industry, but also reshaping the e-commerce customer experience,” says JP Lee, CEO of SoftBank Ventures Asia, in a statement about the latest funding.
Through the app, oHouse users browse photos of other users’ designs for inspiration and purchase items similar to those in the photos. The startup claims that a piece of furniture is purchased through its platform every seven seconds, driving annualized gross merchandise volume to a record $1.7 billion in 2021.
Examples of room layouts posted by users on the oHouse website
Screenshot
In Korea, where half the population lives in the capital Seoul, interior design requires creativity for small and often expensive apartments. In Seoul, studio apartments are typically less than 215 square feet (20 square meters), according to a 2021 local media report.
Also, since the pandemic required many employees to work from home (Korea’s virus prevention and quarantine measures were ranked among the strictest in the world, as the country only opened to foreign tourists last month), the spaces habitable were reconsidered and often redesigned.
“We think some of the behaviors we’ve learned during the pandemic, like spending more time indoors, working from home, and making personal spaces more comfortable… are here to stay,” says Young Jee, chief financial officer of oHouse, a Wharton MBA graduate and former head of Korean billionaire Bom Kim’s e-commerce giant Coupang.
oHead of finances of the house, Young Jee.
Courtesy of oHouse
Because customers aren’t always looking to upgrade furniture, oHouse emphasizes its “content-driven community” of design ideas, along with its lifestyle segment that covers sales of smaller products from curtains to light bulbs. The platform also offers services such as home remodeling, moving, installation and repair. oHouse says it will improve its logistics infrastructure for delivery services.
“If we wanted to expand into a whole new area, like food, which we’re already experimenting with… we’re not just going to show them, say, bread, we’re going to show them a table,” says Jee. “We’re not going to expand into different categories and services just based on how big that market is, it’s what our users are asking for.”
The self-styled “super lifestyle app” is aiming for global expansion, starting with Southeast Asia, the United States and Western Europe; the company’s English website says it will be available in the US this summer. In November, oHouse acquired Singapore’s online furniture platform Hipvan, marking the Korean company’s first step into Southeast Asia.
Beyond growing into new markets, oHouse plans to incorporate machine learning and augmented reality (AR) functionality into its platform, which will allow users to “imagine” what the furniture looks like in their apartment before purchasing new items. The growing capabilities of AR have seen new applications in furniture retailing and interior design, as well as real estate. InSpace, an AR company run by Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree Justin Liang, developed a platform for real estate professionals to host 3D digital replicas of their buildings online.
No matter how big oHouse gets, with moving companies and even food delivery services, Lee still believes his values from that “day of destiny” are intact.
“The reason we’re doing this has always been the same… to make people’s lives better,” says Lee.
Source: www.forbes.com