South Korean home interior platform oHouse raises $182m

South Korean lifestyle home interior platform oHouse, has announced raising $182 million in a Series D funding round backed by SoftBank Ventures Asia.

The funding round was also participated by BRV Capital management, Vertex Growth, which is anchored by Temasek-backed Vertex Holdings, BOND, Korea Development Bank, IMM Investment, and Mirae Asset Capital.

Developed by Bucketplace in 2014, oHouse offers an online-to-offline platform where users can peruse a wide selection of interior postings to find inspiration, discover new products, and purchase them via the app.

The company combines community-driven content with a seamless commerce experience, allowing customers to find inspiration for their homes, discover new products, and purchase interior décor, furniture, and appliances directly from the oHouse app.

Every seven seconds, a furniture item is purchased on the oHouse platform, helping to drive annualized gross merchandise volume to a record $1.7 billion. Having just expanded into new sub-verticals, oHouse now provides a suite of home services, including home remodeling, moving, installation, and repair.

“Eight years ago, oHouse was simply a community of people sharing interior design content with one another,” said Seungjae Lee, Founder and CEO of oHouse.

“Today, we’ve grown into a global platform that brings users together to inspire one another to transform their lives. We’re creating solutions that can help our global user base with every design and style related challenge that they’re facing, whether it be remodeling a bathroom, planning a dinner party or setting-up a home theater system,” Lee added.

The next step for the global brand is to venture deeper into the lifestyle segment, which will include expanding its team internationally, according to the announcement. oHouse will be building out its marketing, sales and product teams in key markets throughout the world, including appointing a head of US expansion.

Beyond growing into new markets, oHouse plans to incorporate machine learning and augmented reality (AR) functionality into its platform, which will completely transform the way users and brands leverage the platform to create content, build community and buy and sell products and services.