You are relocating to a new city where you do not know any person, place or thing. Having found a house to stay, you wonder about various domestic services. Don’t worry, however. Just download apps on your smartphone and tap…

Newcomers to a city often face this predicament. But some of them turn their problems into new career opportunities. That is how the new-age entrepreneurs, domestic service-arrangers, aggregators and problem-solvers—like UrbanClap, Timessaverz and Peppertap--emerged. Their USP: delivering services within hours chosen by the customer at his/her doorsteps.

A fast pace of urbanisation, increasing disposable incomes inversely proportional with availability of time and the resultant haste to get things done have created a huge market for these services. And they are being funded by angel investors big time.

Timesaverz got seed-funding from GSF and two marquee angel investors, Neville Taraporewalla and Rajesh Sawhney, in October 2014, in what was seen as the first external funding in the home services sector in India. It deployed the funds to expand geographies of operations from its base, Mumbai, to Pune and Bengaluru and launch an end-to-end mobility solution, complete with service partners linked to its backend through apps.

Timesaverz.com, whose app is available on Android and Apple store, is India’s first on-demand home services marketplace that offers 40 categories of services at one’s doorsteps. These range from cleaning, repairs, running errands and paperwork. It has enrolled about 1,000 service partners across Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.

A two-year-old Timesaverz gets nearly 200 orders daily. “By this fiscal-end, we plan to expand to other metros. We typically share 20% of the billing amount, while 80% is retained by the local service partner,” Debadutta Upadhyaya, Founder, told BusinessLine.

UrbanClap.com is an online marketplace offering both common and niche services. “We currently offer about 50 services ranging from domestic customer needs (carpenters, plumbers), personal services (yoga-at-home, salon), and events (wedding photography, party catering, event planning). Over the next year, we plan to offer hundreds of services,” Varun Khaitan, 27, Founder and Director, said. “My experience with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) helped me understand how to run a company.”

UrbanClap’s website is both mobile and desktop friendly. Its mobile app version was launched in April 2015. It raised $ 1.6 million (Rs 10.08 crore) from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and the Snapdeal founders.

Founded by alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the University of California at Berkley in 2014, the company was incepted with the idea to help consumers find the best services easily. Its business model is based on the premise of charging the listed professionals for the business they get through the platform. More than 10,000 customers use the platform every month, he said, adding the firm is set to increase service categories and expand its footprint across India. Currently it offers services in Delhi and NCR areas.

On the other hand, Peppertap.com offers a kirana-aggregator’s home delivery grocery service, earning 5 to 15% on each billing amount. “Currently we are active in Gurgaon, West Delhi. Greater Noida and Pune. By June, we would expand to Hyderabad and Bengaluru and by year-end we would have presence in 10-12 cities across India,” said Navneet Singh, Co-Founder, Peppertap.

Founded as India’s first mobile hyper local grocery delivery service in November 2014, the firm now offers over 5,000 products, serving the customer within two hours in a radius of three kms.

So far, it got a total of $ 11.4 million (Rs 72 crore) funding since its inception which will be leveraged on expanding its footprint. Its app is currently available on Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS platforms, he added.

Related Topics