In a bid to scale its beauty services brand AtHomeDiva, online classifieds portal Quikr has acquired on-demand beauty, wellness and fitness app ZapLuk.
With the acquisition, ZapLuk’s co-founder Lavanya Hariharan and a team of close to 50 stylists and professionals will now be a part of AtHomeDiva. The other co-founders of ZapLuk, Manan Maheshwari, Mahesh Gogineni and CTO Varun MS will be pursuing other business interests.
Talking about the acquisition, PD Sundar, Head of QuikrServices, said, “ZapLuk’s operational strengths, trained pool of stylists and professionals and highly engaged user base in the Chennai and Hyderabad markets will allow us to expand the reach of our AtHomeDiva brand in these markets rapidly.”
Quikr launched on-demand beauty service ‘AtHomeDiva’ within its category of QuikrServices in July 2016. The launch followed Quikr’s acquisition of in-home beauty service provider, Salosa in May.
AtHomeDiva offers a full range of in-home beauty and styling services including hair, skin, make-up services and special packages. The services are fulfilled by qualified beauty professionals that have undergone both quality and background checks.
“AtHomeDiva is growing fast and the number of services delivered by our team of trained and professional stylists is growing by more than 100% month on month. While we are experiencing a high repeat rate, what’s even better is that the average transaction value is increasing steadily for repeat users.” said Sundar.
ZapLuk was founded in November 2015 by Manan (an MBA from Duke University and BITS Pilani), Lavanya (an M.Litt in International Business from the University of St. Andrews) and Mahesh (an MBA from Stanford and BITS Pilani). In June this year, ZapLuk announced its merger with Chennai-based salon service Pamperazi.
“Quikr offers immense scope through its various categories that can be cross-leveraged for the beauty services business. This is a huge step forward for our team and a move that will bring us further fast growth. We are excited to join forces with AtHomeDiva as we continue to bring at home beauty services to more people across India.” said Lavanya Hariharan, co-founder, ZapLuk.
On-demand beauty is just one of the 80+ services provided by QuikrServices that caters to 100,000+consumers across India every day. Earlier this month Quikr raised $19.4 Mn (INR 130 Cr) in a debt financing round led by Brand Capital, the private treaty arm of media company Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL).
The on-demand beauty and wellness service industry has seen exponential growth in the last six months. According to a KPMG report, beauty and wellness industry in India will be worth $13 Bn by 2017. In June 2016, Mumbai-based beauty chain Enrich Salon acquired on-demand beauty platform Belita for an undisclosed amount. Prior to this in April 2016, salon chain Naturals invested $15 Mn in Vyomo and re-branded it as Naturals@Home. Other startups in this segment include Purplle, Zenoti, Mazkara, Stayglad, etc.
