The IKEA Nagasandra Store in Bengaluru which was opened on 22 June is IKEA's fourth store in India. The three other IKEA stores are located in Hyderabad, Navi Mumbai, and Worli City Store, respectively.
Spread over 12.2 acres, the 4,60,000 sq. ft. IKEA store in Nagasandra features more than 7,000 well-designed home furnishing products along with over 65 designed room sets for ideas and inspirations at home.
Ankit Garg and Chaitanya Ramalingegowda owned online home solutions company Wakefit meanwhile posted a bold as brass welcome for the international chain.
“The traffic is bad. The weather is amazing, the best brew is at ToiT, the tastiest dosas are at CTR and the Ulsoor lake never ever freezes," the ad began.
See the advertisement here
The brazen advertisement and welcome boasted about Wakefit, who claimed to be the city's ‘favourite home solutions company’.
With a planned investment of ₹3,000 crore in Karnataka, IKEA is expecting to attract close to 50 lakh visitors this year in Bengaluru, the company said.
Wakefit has indulged in a number of advertisements targeting the Swedish home furnishing company. In the one posted above on can see the words mentioned 'Wakefit Trikea" harping on the pun on the name IKEA.
The #WakefitTrikea has had many advertisements, which was in Swedish. The ad contains a QR code which also shows all the locations of the Wakefit offline store in Bengaluru.
Wakefit further took a dig at the fact that the IKEA store is located on the outskirts of India's silicon valley. Hinting at the traffic problems in Bengaluru, Wakefit mentioned “if you are looking for the best furniture in town, all you have to do is visit one of our stores. They are not located on the outskirts of the city. Just saying". The IKEA store is 17 kilometres away from the city centre.
Further Wakefit also mentioned “For the best dosas, go to CTR; for the best sofas come to Wakefit".
This is not the first time a Wakefit advertisement has gone viral. The last time, the online furnishing company had campaigned about its plan to hire ‘sleep interns’ who would be offered a stipend of ₹1 lakh, along with a prize of ₹10 lakh for the best performer!
Netizens this time too were left amused over this advertisement.
IKEA’s global revenue stands at €41.9 billion and its brand value is $21billion. Meanwhile, Wakefit, which was established in 2016, has a valuation of $380 million (2,800 crore post its Series C funding in November 2021), and revenue/turnover at $56.02 million (416 crore in FY21).
According to various estimates, Wakefit.co owns 2-3% of the overall mattress market but with respect to the online sleep solutions space, it commands a market share of almost 35-40%.
