The funding comes at a time when home services platform operators have raised fresh capital to remain afloat, pursue consolidation efforts and to remain competitive and scale rapidly.
Bengaluru: Taskbob, a home services company run by Mumbai-based Crenovative Ideas Pvt. Ltd, has raised Rs.28 crore ($4.5 million) in a series A funding round led by IvyCap Ventures, Orios Ventures and Mayfield Ventures.
The funding will be used to expand product growth, innovate and pursue strategic acquisition to help scale the company’s orders to 10,000 per day within the next 18 months from around 1,000 currently, the company said in a statement. Taskbob had raised $1.2 million in April 2015.
The funding comes at a time when home services platform operators have raised fresh capital to remain afloat, pursue consolidation efforts and to remain competitive and scale rapidly.
“Fulfilment, not discovery, is the real problem in India’s local services space. With this in mind, we have been more focussed on supply and fulfilment issues rather than plain demand aggregation,” Aseem Khare, chief executive officer of Taskbob said in the statement.
Norbert Fernandes, co-founder and principal at IvyCap will join the board at Taskbob.
There are over 100 home services companies providing services like electricians, home cleaning, pest control and other services. Both local and home services companies have so far raised around $180 million cumulatively so far, according to data by start-up tracker Traxcn.
Founded by Aseem Khare, Abhiroop Medhekar, Ajay Bhatt and Amit Chahalia in 2015, Taskbob offers home services like cleaning, drivers and maids.
The company acquired Zepper Services Pvt. Ltd in November 2015 to expand its offerings in Bengaluru.
The three most well-funded companies in the home services space are Housejoy (Sarvaloka Services On-call Pvt. Ltd) which raised Rs.150 crore in December 2015 by a clutch of investors led by online marketplace Amazon India; UrbanClap Technologies Pvt. Ltd which raised $25 million by Bessemer Venture Partners in November 2015; and Quikr India Pvt. Ltd which has committed to investRs.250 crore into its home and local services arm QuikrServices.
Others like Rejuvenate Solutions Pvt. Ltd-run Zimmber are in advanced talks with online marketplace Snapdeal to raise around $7 million.
The funding has been mainly used to expand to new cities and strategic acquisitions. Housejoy has acquired laundry start-up MyWash and fitness start-up Orobind, Zimmber has acquired laundry start-up Dhulai and hyperlocal market place Findyahan.