During the covid-19 pandemic, many people have become accustomed to home Internet classes or telecommuting At the same time, many people have also found many short decoration boards on weekdays, and hope to carry out some modifications in the follow-up to enhance the learning, work, leisure and entertainment experience Data show that the growth of DIY installation market is quite strong. It is estimated that by the end of 2028, the global scale will reach US $514.9 billion - much higher than US $333.7 billion in 2021.
Korean start-up bucketplace Jay Lee, co-founder and CEO, said in a recent interview that the company hopes to complete the latest $182 million round D financing. While accelerating the growth of local business in South Korea, bucketplace also plans to enter new markets such as Japan, Southeast Asia and the United States.
To this end, they will recruit more technical experts to enhance the augmented reality (AR) experience of ohouse, their home and interior decoration application, so as to help consumers decorate their home and related decoration in a more visual way.
A few months ago, bucketplace just acquired the Singapore online furniture platform hipvan. Lee said the company would continue to seek acquisition opportunities and establish more strategic partnerships in South Korea and overseas markets.
Eight years ago, ohouse It's just a community that shares interior design content. When the app was launched in 2016, it quickly attracted many interior designers and installation enthusiasts to post photos and exchange experience on it.
In addition to reading various posts through the app side, the platform also allows users to easily purchase relevant products, which is somewhat similar to Houzz (the latter also has a large number of online exhibition halls).
At present, the goal of this start-up is to provide customers with services covering almost all areas of installation, from decoration and maintenance to furniture handling and even laundry.
In June last year, ohouse launched the home next day service. Users can specify the date and time when they want to receive furniture in advance. In addition, the platform is also committed to connecting users with 5000 + home decoration companies.
As for when the latest AR function will come, it is not known at present. However, when the service is officially launched, it will allow users to upload indoor photos and preview the appearance of a piece of furniture in a specific space. If users feel satisfied, they can click and jump to the seller's website at any time.
As a start-up enterprise, bucketplace has developed rapidly, with tens of millions of visitors to apps and websites every month, and more than 20 million client downloads in the Korean local market.
Finally, although Lee declined to comment on the company's valuation, bucketplace completed round D financing with a post investment valuation of about $1.4 billion (a total of about $261 million), according to people familiar with the matter.
Investors include Softbank Asia venture capital, vertex growth, Temasek venture capital, bond capital, BRV capital management, Korea Development Bank, IMM investment and mirae asset capital.
It has almost doubled compared with the valuation after the last round of financing in November 2020 ($70 million) (about $890 million).