An Evolving Online Home Decor Startup

Small ideas lead to big changes. When the three friends and founders of Skycandle met over a routine cup of coffee and discussed the idea of selling skylanterns online in the year 2013, little did they know they would evolve into one of the trendiest home décor start ups selling chic home décor items online in India. This, by no means pin points the success of Skycandle on fate, but points to the dedicated vision of the three friends who established a flourishing business out of their coffee time chat! Thus, plunging to burn the proverbial midnight oil, the three founders – Gaurav Garg (Director), Aditee Joshi (CEO) and Garima Garg incepted Skycandle.in the year 2013 selling quirky, chic, tasteful and designer candles and sky lanterns at affordable rates through a user friendly website across the country to 19,000 area pin codes.
Skycandle.in is an affordable one stop shopping solution tailored for the modern Indian consumer, always on a lookout to decorate their homes without burning a hole in the pocket. Coming from strong market research, personal sensibilities and experience, the founders foresaw the huge market demand for candles and sky lanterns – popular gift and home décor items that are not very cheap to buy. Also missing were variations and styles, which presented a huge opportunity to the founders.
Gaurav Garg, Founder & Director says, “We started out with skylanterns and candles – popular gifts and home décor items – that are much loved by Indians and quickly add a dash of personality to any space they adorn. While Indians have been traditionally big on lamps, Skycandle.in took the fetish further by providing uber chic, practical and affordable designs that are hard to find anywhere else.” From women to men, Skycandle has products to cater to all individual needs.
Evolving in step with the consumer.
Affordability and utility are two aspects that make Skycandle.in a first choice for most shoppers. The concept of gifts has evolved in time and Gen Y believes in ‘gifts with a purpose’. Skycandle.in has successfully tapped this market segment through up-to-date market research and focus on innovative products. Starting with the much in vogue skylanterns and lamps, the company now offers wall décor, lights and gift packs in different price ranges. “Keeping in step with the evolving sensibilities of Gen Y, we have recently added Kitchen and Home cleaning utilities to our online catalogue, a big hit with women – helping them achieve the perfect balance on professional and personal fronts. This move was based on in-depth market research and has significantly added to our revenues,” elaborates Gaurav.
Currently, the company is designing products under 40 verticals including home décor, products targeted at Indian festivals, home & kitchen utilities and sports accessories. Each design added on the website is unique and there is absolutely no compromise on design and quality of any of the products. Vivek Agarwal, Chairman in GPA Group explains the roadmap: “At Skycandle, we service the needs of the everyday Indian who thinks twice before buying expensive home décor items, choosing to rely more on their creativity to personalize their living space.” With over a 1000 SKUs, Skycandle has diversified across categories, but its focus heavily remains on home décor segment constituting 6% of the e-commerce market and soon aims to venture into retail outlets in Tier I and Tier II cities for faster deliveries.
Skycandle.in has seen tremendous growth since its official incubation under GPA Group in 2015 in terms of sales growth and business expansion. When most startups are struggling to find their feet, Skycandle is on its way to operational profitability and was recently awarded for the “Make in India” initiative. Strategy, performance evaluation and customer satisfaction are the pillars on which the company has forged its success backed by a well-trained team & experienced guidance of GPA Group.
Starting out with INR 50,000 borrowed from family and friends, Skycandle has come a long way serving up to 3,000 orders on a daily basis, catering to the ever growing demand of affordable décor items online. Leveraging on innovation, customer satisfaction and growth hacking through festive coupons and sales, the company expanded its consumer base despite initial hiccups attracting several investors and received bootstrap funding from GPA Group led by Vivek Agarwal earlier this year, propelling another cycle of growth.