Ever been in a situation when your kitchen tap has been leaking for days and you are not able to get a plumber to set it right? Or, the housing society electrician fixed your switch board by drilling a hole into the wall and went away without cleaning the dust lying on the floor? Or, the AC-repairman charged a thousand bucks to just change a plug? Well, a resounding yes will be the answer to all these questions.

But how many saw a potential business in the crisis-kind of a situation? Rodney Lobo did. He saw a huge opportunity in the day-to-day home maintenance problems and started providing solutions through ‘MyHomeMaker’ (MHM).

Second venture

It is Lobo’s second venture, which was born in 2010 while he was running his maiden business in DTH client servicing. The idea for his first venture came up while he was working for Tata Teleservices, in 2004. He quit his job amidst protest from his family.

“While I started my DTH client servicing business, I found that the customers often asked our technicians to do some additional wire or tap fixing, change tubelights and other odd electrical jobs. This is when I realised that though there is no dearth of skilled electricians in the cities, finding them on time was difficult. This is how MHM was born,” Lobo said.

Lobo, who is based out of Kandivili in Mumbai’s western suburbs, started a pilot with his friends and neighbours in and around his own housing society. For this he provided customers with skilled technicians, all employed by him, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Rs 1,000 subscription for a year. What started with just five technicians is now a full-fledged company with 45 trained technicians servicing over 3,800 customers from four offices in Mumbai. MHM also has a 21-seater call centre that responds to customer queries.

“There is a huge potential in cities where distance, travel, work make it near impossible for households to get people to fix their problems when needed. There are about 1.59 lakh housing societies and 70 lakh single residential apartments in Mumbai alone and about 60 per cent of these do not have a proper facility management system. These are old properties,” Lobo said, adding that they have to depend on unorganised and unskilled workers.

So how are Lobo’s technicians different? Dressed in smart uniforms, his technicians are qualified, courteous, possess proper identity badges. They earn Rs 12,000-14,000 a month and there is an incentive structure as well.

“They are trained workers and as the sector is fairly unorganised we have come out with insurance and provident fund schemes for our employees. We have a strong employee engagement programme in our company,” Lobo added.

Lobo plans to expand mostly through franchisees to Pune, Nagpur and Ahmedabad during the year and is looking at hiring another 600 technicians. “There is less risk involved through franchising your business,” he added.

So how does Lobo manage to reach out to these households? He has tied up with local mom-and-pop hardware and electrical stores. “There are about 1,700 such stores in the city and about 25,000-odd jobs fulfilled from these stores. They act as our marketers,” Lobo added.

Services on cards

On the anvil are a range of services that include volunteers on call in case of emergency, utility bill payment, flower, cake or chocolates delivery, services related to renewal of driving licence and courier service. All services will be on subscription basis that range from Rs 2,800 to Rs 4,000 per year. While the services are available within eight hours of placing a request, Lobo said the company is usually able to provide the service within two hours and this he plans to bring it down to just 30 minutes, like pizza deliveries. The 12 hours a day will be changed to 24x7.

Another interesting service Lobo plans to launch is helping with in-house parties. “Many a times the woman of the house turns into a second help during small gatherings and parties at home and is not able to attend to the guests. To fix this we have plans to tie up with small agencies providing cook and maid services.. They will be dressed in uniforms and charge Rs 400-500 per day depending on the work,” Lobo explained.

Lobo plans to get aggressive with marketing, using social media, and scaling up operations. Started at an initial investment of Rs 25 lakh, Lobo has invested all that in his call centre and a CRM system.

“I haven’t yet made money. It will only reflect once I receive the renewals from subscriptions this year. With major expansion plans, I am also looking for venture capital funding this year. The target is to roll out services in 10 cities in three years,” Lobo added.

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> priyanka.pani@thehindu.co.in

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