Urban Company launches Disinfection Services for Homes & Commercial Spaces

 

• Urban Company (formerly UrbanClap) launches disinfection service in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune.

• Disinfection Service will use Virex 256 chemical which is proven to kill disease-causing viruses, including coronavirus.

 

Urban Company, India’s largest home services company, today announced the launch of disinfection services for homes and commercial spaces. The newly launched service is aimed at protecting customers, whether families or corporates, from the transmission of viruses (including coronavirus), bacteria and fungi.

The company, currently, is offering disinfection services in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. It will launch the service in Kolkata, Ahmedabad, and other cities by the end of April. The company added that services will be provided by well-trained and equipped professionals who are permitted by local authorities. The service partners will be wearing a full-body protective suit to ensure the safety of customers as well as their own.

Commenting on the launch, Mr. Abhiraj Bhal, Co-founder, Urban Company, said, “Disinfection services are the need of the hour. We have been getting a lot of requests from our customers and are happy to launch these services in our endeavor to keep them safe. Further, we felt it was necessary to include commercial spaces to provide people with a safe and healthy environment.”

For disinfection service, the company will use Virex 256 chemical which is approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to kill the coronavirus. The service will also ensure sanitisation of high-touch points such as doors, handles, switchboards, and taps. For residential spaces, the service is available at Rs.1700 onwards and its duration may vary from 1 to 2 hours, depending on the size of the house. For commercial spaces, the price depends on the size of the facility. 



About Urban Company:

Founded in Nov 2014, Urban Company (formerly UrbanClap) is India and the UAE’s largest home services company. The company offers services such as beauty and spa at home, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, appliance repair, painting, etc. through its mobile app and website. It operates in 18 cities in India (including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, Surat, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam) and 4 international markets (Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sydney and Singapore). It has a partner network of over 30,000 hand-picked service professionals, who are provided financing, training, and product or consumables support. This full-stack approach helps the company live up to its promise of delivering high-quality, delightful services at home.

Home Jiny the Worlds’ 1st E-commerce Platform with Household Products and Services Disrupts the On-demand Home Delivery Market

• A bootstrapped start-up is aiming to raise Rs. 100 million in the coming months.


• The first-of-its kind on-demand market place comes with a guaranteed delivery of Milk to Maid, Oil to OTG Repair, Daal to Driver, Celery to Chef, Potato to Painter.


• A hassle-free experience across 1,000+ products and over 200 services that are not offered by any of the E-comm incumbents so far.

Home Jiny, the e-commerce products and service aggregator has made its debut in Delhi-NCR with an aim to disrupt the segment by offering a single app that provides over 1000 products and 220+ services by trusted service providers in the area. Targeted at the busy urban households of Delhi-NCR, Home Jiny is the only application available on Android and IOS so far that allows a buyer to choose and select myriad products and services such as dairy products, grocery, fruits and vegetables along with frequently used Services like Maids, Drivers, Cooks, Laundry and many more. The brand focuses on targeting housing societies and building density and penetration in each micro-cluster before moving on to the next one.

Home Jiny has already started holding its experiential events in select localities to give the customers a taste of quality, comfort and flexibility that the app offers. Already available in select areas of Faridabad, Gurgaon and Delhi, the brand seeks to cater 80% of the Delhi-NCR region by Dec 2020. The brand is already receiving 250 orders per day and has a run rate of 7000 orders per month.

The initiative has already received a funding of Rs. 25 Million and is already in talks for another round of funding worth Rs. 100 Million for this mould-breaking venture. The team behind this initiative is leveraging their market insights and in-house technology platform to customize experiences for the ever-growing demand of the customers in the region.

Speaking on the launch, Kuldeep Pandit, Founder & CEO, Home Jiny said, “We are excited to launch Home Jiny in the buzzing e-commerce space. Delhi-NCR is world’s 2nd most populous urban agglomeration that buys their frequently used items and services from unorganised sector, that has no guarantee on the supplies and the price also fluctuates. We at Home Jiny are committed to ensure the availability of supplies through our 1000+ products and 200 plus services through our tie-ups with over 60 service providers that allows us to deliver goods and services that are of superior quality, are delivered timely to the consumers at their door-step through our app while promoting the digitisation and hyper localisation of the neighbourhood stores."

He further added, “According to our survey, Indian households spend around 45 days (450 Hours/Year) in a year, to procure frequently used products and services. Home Jiny wants to free up lives of thousands of households and bring quality products and services reduce that time and allow the customers to utilise those precious moments in something that they really want to do in life. We look forward to catering over 5000 households by end of Feburary 2020."

About Home Jiny

Home Jiny is the first online e-commerce platform in the world that provides all frequently used products and services a household needs through a single app. It offers virtually everything a customer wishes for, whether it is products such as Milk, Bread, Fruits, Vegetables, Non-veg & FMCG products and frequently used services such as Maids, Drivers, Cooks, Laundry and many more or services (1000+ frequently used products in 16 categories and 200+ frequently used services in 19 categories). Instead of juggling with multiple vendors, shops, service providers and apps, the customer will have the freedom to get everything on one app. The products are sourced from the best vendors through rigorous buying and quality processes. The services are delivered by authorized, certified and trained service partners across the spectrum.

The blue color of Jiny signifies freedom that households will have from negative labour of daily buying. The yellow color signifies magical power to make virtually anything available at the click of a button on an app and thus provide convenience and reliability to build trust. The red color signifies the energy, excitement, and passion of Home Jiny team to delight customers and fulfill their household wishes and give them the freedom to do what they always wanted to do in life.

~ Newsvoir

IIM-Bangalore Alumnus Founded Home Services Marketplace SendHelper Raises $610,000

Singapore-based Sendhelper, an online jobs search platform for blue-collared workers, has raised around $500,000 in seed funding from Asian technology investor Captii ventures. Sendhelper, which has plans to foray into India soon, enables individuals, service providers and households to book and pay for home services.

Founded in 2014 by Rupam Biswas, an IIM Bengaluru alumnus, Sendhelper also has its sibling B2B platform 'SendJobs', which is touted as a "LinkedIn for blue-collar workers" and is an e-commerce platform dedicated to providing household services such as cleaning, cooking and laundry in Singapore but plans to use the funds raised to expand its online jobs search business.

The freshly raised funds will be utilized by the startup for growing their services across markets and launching Sendjobs, which according to its Linkedin page, uses artificial intelligence to allow employers to identify suitable candidates to chat with, and hire.

According to Biswas, who's also CEO of the company, “Our experience in the B2C services segment led us to discover that there was also a constant challenge for Singapore’s employers to fulfil demand for manpower for non-executive positions."

“We believe similar challenges exists in many developing markets as also in India where we plan to foray”, he said.

Sendjobs, the jobs search business of Sendhelper, has already on-boarded 500 employers in Singapore in the past five months, according to Biswas.

Prior to founding Sendhelper, Biswas was a former investment manager at India’s IDFC group.

In its future plans, Sendhelper aims to expand its services into other markets including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and South America.

Source - Straits Times

Home Service Startup HouseJoy Lays Off Over 40 Employees Amid Funding Crunch

Matrix Partners-backed home services startup Housejoy, which last raised funding in December 2015, has reportedly laid off more than 40 employees across its departments to check mounting cost structures at a time of slow revenue growth.

Citing an industry insider, the report said that the startup has showed the exit route to employees at mid-management levels across its digital marketing, technical and back-end operations teams.

Housejoy, which last raised $23 million in Series-B lead by Amazon, in December'15, is also on verge of shutting down its categories that offer little or no unit margins such as specialized lifestyle and health services.

Additionally, according to one of Housejoy employee cited in the report, the startup is looking to turn the platform to a marketplace model and gradually reducing its exposure to operationally-intensive categories. The company would now focus mainly on fulfillment categories such as beauty and selective home services (handyman services) that enable a transaction model.

Moreover, the startup had also explored a potential sale to OLX India, Quikr and UrbanClap in the past two-three quarters, but the talks did not materialize, said the report citing a person aware of the negotiations.

Housejoy is now looking to focus on categories where it can provide service through the platform, thereby increasing scope for revenue accruals rather than just leadbased services where the cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than the revenue earned.

Industry experts peg this operational burn to have further increased in this financial year with Housejoy struggling to raise funds for last three years.

To recall, Housejoy has made its first acquisition when it bought online laundry services player , at an undisclosed amount, in February 2016.

In August 2016, Housejoy has launched the first of its kind Geo-Targeted technology in all 8 cities it operates, and at that time Housejoy website and the app also unveiled refreshingly new look with captivating content , transparency in pricing and clear information on services offered from the start to its completion and various customizations available for all its 12 categories of that time.

The online services market in India crossed $70 million in 2017 and at a compound annual growth rate of about 60%, the market is expected to grow to $300 million by 2020, according to Redseer Consulting.

In January 2017, Mumbai based home & beauty services startup Taskbob, owned by Crenovative Ideas, had to shut down its operations as the startup failed to raise fresh funds for one year.

Home Service Startup HouseJoy Lays Off Over 40 Employees Amid Funding Crunch

Matrix Partners-backed home services startup Housejoy, which last raised funding in December 2015, has reportedly laid off more than 40 employees across its departments to check mounting cost structures at a time of slow revenue growth.

Citing an industry insider, the report said that the startup has showed the exit route to employees at mid-management levels across its digital marketing, technical and back-end operations teams.

Housejoy, which last raised $23 million in Series-B lead by Amazon, in December'15, is also on verge of shutting down its categories that offer little or no unit margins such as specialized lifestyle and health services.

Additionally, according to one of Housejoy employee cited in the report, the startup is looking to turn the platform to a marketplace model and gradually reducing its exposure to operationally-intensive categories. The company would now focus mainly on fulfillment categories such as beauty and selective home services (handyman services) that enable a transaction model.

Moreover, the startup had also explored a potential sale to OLX India, Quikr and UrbanClap in the past two-three quarters, but the talks did not materialize, said the report citing a person aware of the negotiations.

Housejoy is now looking to focus on categories where it can provide service through the platform, thereby increasing scope for revenue accruals rather than just leadbased services where the cost of acquiring a customer is much higher than the revenue earned.

Industry experts peg this operational burn to have further increased in this financial year with Housejoy struggling to raise funds for last three years.

To recall, Housejoy has made its first acquisition when it bought online laundry services player , at an undisclosed amount, in February 2016.

In August 2016, Housejoy has launched the first of its kind Geo-Targeted technology in all 8 cities it operates, and at that time Housejoy website and the app also unveiled refreshingly new look with captivating content , transparency in pricing and clear information on services offered from the start to its completion and various customizations available for all its 12 categories of that time.

The online services market in India crossed $70 million in 2017 and at a compound annual growth rate of about 60%, the market is expected to grow to $300 million by 2020, according to Redseer Consulting.

In January 2017, Mumbai based home & beauty services startup Taskbob, owned by Crenovative Ideas, had to shut down its operations as the startup failed to raise fresh funds for one year.

Mumbai-Based Prohandz Lets You Book For 60 Professional Home Services

Providing helping hands to its users through a number of services such as home maintenance, home interior, home exterior, gadget maintenance, special services etc., ProHandz is a mobile app has the capability to become your go-to app on a daily basis.

Inspiration behind starting ProHandz?

First and foremost, lets assume you and me never heard of UrbalClap, Housejoy, Zimmber etc. So, now lets hear it - according to the startup, the "Pro" in ProHandz stands for professional, and this is exactly what they wish to add to the currently unorganised home service market. Using skilful, professional hands “Handz”, the startup is hopeful to bring a revolution in the home service market and set the customers free from the tedious task of finding professionals specific to certain services.

What makes ProHandz different from others?

The home service market is currently a hotbed for startups, and in order to carve its own identity in the herd, ProHandz gives its users a 30-day guarantee for each of the 60 professional services that they provide. Further, keeping in mind the time is money mantra, the startup allows the users the luxury to customise their services in order to suit their needs.

In addition to all this, in order to ensure the safety and provide its users a worry free experience, the startup runs a thorough background check of all its service providers.

Founders -

ProHandz has been conceived by three gems, Hemant Patel, Vipul Raval, and Gurmeet Singh Bindra, having a collective experience of 60 years working in the industry.

Hemant Patel- Having more than 15 years of experience in investment banking and institutional equity research by his side, Hemant aspires to build a platform that provides clear, effective and quick communication.

Vipul Raval- The 12 years that he had spent in the consumer durable niche, prior to ProHandz, has helped him acquire full knowledge and understanding about consumer behavior and requirements. He's known in the industry for being the youngest Non-German MD in Bosch & Siemens, a home appliances company.

Gurmeet Singh Bindra - Having invested two decades in developing software for MNCs, Bindra has a stranglehold in the IT field.

What are they doing to succeed?

According to the startup, while their IT department is experienced enough to churn out a unique customer interface and market place, but it is their consumer insights and execution capabilities that can help them establish their dominance in the competitive home service market.

Funding -

ProHandz is a combination a funded startup as well as a self-funded startup.

Future Plans of ProHandz -

Having just gotten started, the startup aspires its app to be the most successful online market place for home services. According to startup, they wish to measure success not by any scale, but its ability to build a brand that stands out from its competitors for providing value-addition to consumers. In order to achieve all this, they're currently working on building a revenue model that would enable them to grow and derive profits in this competitive environment.

The only downside for now is, that ProHandz is only available for Smartphones users in Mumbai.

Services Marketplace Startup Aarigo Is Different In A Way That Its 'Open'

In this fast-paced life, we're seldom able to focus on all the dimensions of our life and keep everyone happy. Most of the times, while we're able to take care of our personal life and relationships, it's our own home, health and beauty that takes the beating. Working on the principle of 'YOU is also important', is Aarigo, a Mumbai based startup.

Claiming to be India's first open market place for service, Aarigo helps by connecting all types of local service providers to service seekers. For example, if your toilet tap needs a quick fix, or you need an urgent beauty parlour appointment for a party, they're your go-to people. The customers are provided with the options of professional service provider on the basis of various parameters such as price, quality and reviews.

The process involved is quite simple. A customer seeking a particular service is simply required to browse that particular service over the Aarigo website. On search, a list of trusted service providers in their locality will be displayed on their computer screen. They can then choose the best service provider on the basis of his/her price, quality and service.

Taking inspiration from big tech giants such as Apple Inc., Facebook and Microsoft etc., about how they have continuously managed to evolve and improve their products, customer support, and technology, inspite of being market leaders, the Aarigo team aims to serve the customer with the best quality possible.

Encouraging people to move away from Yellow pages and random Google searches for services providers, Aarigo.com not only helps customers in saving time, and energy but also their hard earned money.

According to the startup, the USP of their services is that they are regularly updated and work in real-time. Aarigo is a person's one stop shop for his multiple local services needs. Currently, a customer can book every type of hyper local service providers within a minute, using Aarigo. There is no other company currently in the market providing all these features.

[caption id="attachment_102518" align="alignleft" width="383"] (L-R) Sushant Darekar & Amit Baravkar[/caption]

Aarigo is the result of the vision of two brilliant minds, Sushant Darekar, CEO & Co Founder and Amit Baravkar, CTO & Co Founder. Sushant is an MBA graduate from Wales University (UK), having worked for 3 years in London in an MNC. He currently looks after overall strategy planning and overall product development, and other areas.

Amit, however, is a B. Tech (Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering), BBA (Corporate secretaryship), M.Tech (Systems Management), Master of Business Laws. Since the year 2012 he has been engaged in various businesses. He currently looks after technological development and needs of the Aarigo.com website.

With more than 200 service providers and 5000 unique visitors within two months of the launch, the path ahead for Aarigo.com looks quite bright. They have also successfully processed orders and transaction of worth more than 50k within such a short period of time.

Currently bootstrapped, the startup is looking forward to raising funds and is in talks with various angles and early stage investor for the same.

Services Marketplace Startup Aarigo Is Different In A Way That Its 'Open'

In this fast-paced life, we're seldom able to focus on all the dimensions of our life and keep everyone happy. Most of the times, while we're able to take care of our personal life and relationships, it's our own home, health and beauty that takes the beating. Working on the principle of 'YOU is also important', is Aarigo, a Mumbai based startup.

Claiming to be India's first open market place for service, Aarigo helps by connecting all types of local service providers to service seekers. For example, if your toilet tap needs a quick fix, or you need an urgent beauty parlour appointment for a party, they're your go-to people. The customers are provided with the options of professional service provider on the basis of various parameters such as price, quality and reviews.

The process involved is quite simple. A customer seeking a particular service is simply required to browse that particular service over the Aarigo website. On search, a list of trusted service providers in their locality will be displayed on their computer screen. They can then choose the best service provider on the basis of his/her price, quality and service.

Taking inspiration from big tech giants such as Apple Inc., Facebook and Microsoft etc., about how they have continuously managed to evolve and improve their products, customer support, and technology, inspite of being market leaders, the Aarigo team aims to serve the customer with the best quality possible.

Encouraging people to move away from Yellow pages and random Google searches for services providers, Aarigo.com not only helps customers in saving time, and energy but also their hard earned money.

According to the startup, the USP of their services is that they are regularly updated and work in real-time. Aarigo is a person's one stop shop for his multiple local services needs. Currently, a customer can book every type of hyper local service providers within a minute, using Aarigo. There is no other company currently in the market providing all these features.

[caption id="attachment_102518" align="alignleft" width="383"] (L-R) Sushant Darekar & Amit Baravkar[/caption]

Aarigo is the result of the vision of two brilliant minds, Sushant Darekar, CEO & Co Founder and Amit Baravkar, CTO & Co Founder. Sushant is an MBA graduate from Wales University (UK), having worked for 3 years in London in an MNC. He currently looks after overall strategy planning and overall product development, and other areas.

Amit, however, is a B. Tech (Biotechnology & Genetic Engineering), BBA (Corporate secretaryship), M.Tech (Systems Management), Master of Business Laws. Since the year 2012 he has been engaged in various businesses. He currently looks after technological development and needs of the Aarigo.com website.

With more than 200 service providers and 5000 unique visitors within two months of the launch, the path ahead for Aarigo.com looks quite bright. They have also successfully processed orders and transaction of worth more than 50k within such a short period of time.

Currently bootstrapped, the startup is looking forward to raising funds and is in talks with various angles and early stage investor for the same.