Zigwheels' Akshay Chaturvedi joins Housefull as co-founder and joint CEO

Housefull.co.in is an e-commerce platform for Housefull International, a retail chain for furnishings across the country.

Akshay Chaturvedi, former business head of auto portal ZigWheels.com, has joined Housefull.co.in as co-founder and joint CEO. Zigwheels was recently acquired by Girnar Software owned CarDekho.com.

Housefull.co.in is the e-commerce platform for Housefull International, a retail furnishings chain. The company, which was launched in August 2006, has 41 independent retail stores and 11 Shop-in-Shop format stores in cities across India including Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mysore, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

The company now forays into the omni-channel retail market, with the focus on e-commerce. "The company plans to invest in the e-commerce operations. We are a curated platform for furniture in India. The platform will offer design choices to urban consumers. The company plans to launch exclusive partnerships and lines will be created which will be unveiled in January next year," says Chaturvedi, who will be based in Gurgaon and will be responsible for setting up operations of the digital.

Chaturvedi has a tough challenge ahead as the platform will face competition from existing players in the category including Urban Ladder, HomeLane, Bedbathmore.com and Rocket Internet's FabFurnish. Moreover, well-known online home stores such as Amazon India, Snapdeal, HomeShop18, Jabong and Infibeam will push the competition further.

But, armed with 14 years of experience across digital strategy, internet products, retail, etailing, business strategy, marketing and consumer insights, Chaturvedi may well rise up to the competition. He has spent more than seven years at Times Internet, before joining Housefull. He joined the Times Group in the vice chairman's strategy office and after corporate assignments in BCCL and Times Internet, he took up product and business roles within TIL. He was also the founder member of the music streaming platform Gaana.com.

Prior to the Times Group, Chaturvedi was a retail and CPG consultant with KSA -Technopak, where he was instrumental in consulting retailers like Reliance Retail, Marks & Spencers, Bharti Walmart, Vision Express, Landmark Group, and Borders, among other marquee names.

He has also consulted consumer goods majors like HUL, P&G, Marico and Microsoft for key assignments with respect to modern retail strategy.