Investors Gain Interest In Mobile-Only Services Marketplaces: TaskBob & UrbanClap Get Funded

A number of startups are making a foray in local services marketplace model. Just 2 days back, startup for hiring local service providers LocalOye, had raised $5 Mn in Series A funding from Tiger Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Today, two more startups working in similar space have announced that they have got funded. Taskbob, home services startup picked up a funding of $1.2 Mn from Orios, Mayfield and on the other side, another mobile services marketplace, UrbanClap has raised INR 10 Cr. in funding from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and the founders of Snapdeal, Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

Taskbob

The mobile-only home services startup, TaskBob offers instant home services by sending pre-screened, verified, skilled professional serviceman at the customer doorstep to fix household appliances such as AC, washing machine, computer and refrigerator. It simplifies the entire process, from finding a serviceman to ensuring the service, with the help of a user-friendly mobile-app interface. The firm takes referrals of friends, fellow users to choose the best servicemen in the particular locality. However, the startup also claims to refund the money in case if the customer is not satisfied with the service.

IIT Bombay graduate Aseem Khare, founder and CEO TaskBob says “There is a lack of reliable and convenient home services in India. Our vision is to fill that void, by providing a state-of the-art household management service, with which we hope to rid the consumers of the unreliability that currently exists in the sector.”

TaskBob, which is currently operational in Powai (suburb of Mumbai), said that the funding will be used in the capital to expand to other parts of the city.

Investor Gopal Modi, Vice President at Mayfield says “The customer is constantly struggling to get dependable utility services at home and is rarely able to get the vendor at his time and convenience. The business addresses this core pain-point of the Indian household. We see this as a very large addressable market of over 100 million households.”

Taskbob was founded in 2014, very recently it was declared as the winner of India Quotient’s MobileIQ competition.

UrbanClap

UrbanClap was founded in October 2014 by Varun Khaitan (IIT Kanpur, BCG), Abhiraj Bhal (IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Kanpur, BCG) and Raghav Chandra (Ex-Twitter engineer) is the simplest way to find and hire trusted services. The platform currently serving Delhi-NCR and planning to expand its reach to more cities in near future.

The platform connects service professional like a plumber, a wedding photographer, a yoga teacher, or an interior designer. UrbanClap’s ambition is to connect people with the best professional who can do exactly what they want at a price you are comfortable paying.

The company plans to invest the funds in strengthening its technology and team. Besides, the funding will be utilized to scale the platform to more service categories and cities.

Speaking on this development, Raghav Chandra, Co-founder, UrbanClap said, “The platform is already making thousands of successful connections every week and with the backing of our investors, we plan to scale the platform across hundreds of services and multiple cities”

Commenting on the investment scenario, Subrata Mitra, Partner, Accel India, said, “Being early investors in product ecommerce in India, we believe in the power of a marketplace for services.” Mukul Singhal of SAIF Partners also believes that there is an immense potential in a mobile based marketplace to help consumers find and hire any service.

It seems after many successful exits and strong industry growth, more investors are eyeing tech startups to pump heavy capital. The last week alone saw the 13 startups raising over $603 Mn in funding including Zomato, Ola & PressPlay.