Why On-Demand Service is a Great Startup Opportunity How this startup is poised to make online home services an integral part of evolution process.
By Samiksha Jain •
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As India wakes up to the efficacy and practicality of online ordering, it comes across as a huge market that largely remains untapped in India. A handful of startups like Timesaverz, Doormint, UrbanClap, Mr. Right, Taskbob and Zepper understood the potential and are catering to this segment. Moreover, investors are also showing interest in these startups as they are receiving funding from them in quick succession.
One such startup that saw the opportunity quite early is Timesaverz. This company is poised to make online home services an integral part of this evolution process. Founded in April 2012 by Debadutta Upadhyaya and Lovnish Bhatia, Timesaverz is home services marketplace that delivers various services to one's door step- from cleaning, repairs, handyman jobs to running errands and paperwork.
Entrepreneurial Journey
The trigger was a combination of personal experience and business potential analysis. Upadhyaya, a working mom, and Bhatia, a tech enthusiast, were keen to solve the household dilemmas with negligible or no support system in metros faced day in and day out to fulfil their home services requirements.
"We collaborated to start what is today's India's first home services marketplace – Timesaverz. That it was going to be the first of its kind business enterprise in India was an added incentive to plunge into the entrepreneurial world for both of us, apart from the fact that we saw immense potential in leveraging our new media experience to create a new business around mobile economy," said Upadhyaya, Founder, Timesaverz.
The company started its operations in April 2013 with the aim to help people organize home jobs meticulously. "Coincidentally, just when we were mulling over the idea, the western world started witnessing a surge of such businesses around shared economy models that gave a fillip to our idea and made the decision that much easier. But it took a good one year to take it from an ideation to launch phase during which we conducted many a consumer research and pivots," recalls Upadhyaya.
Get the money rolling in
Startup works on curated marketplace where it helps folks with solutions for various home-centric tasks -- cleaning, appliance repairs and services, handymen jobs like plumbing, electrical servicing and carpentry; pest control of all kinds, beauty services at home and laundry management services on a shared economy model popular in the West.
Built on a commission-based structure, the company retains a particular percentage of commission of the total billing to client. "Our revenue model is a commission based one where we share 80 per cent of the earnings from consumers with our service partners," informed Upadhyaya.
Identify USP
Startup has managed to create its own identity among its competitors. It is an end-to-end digital experience that starts with searching for services to checking out by paying online. It has enabled them to stand out from the rest of the players dealing in the same space. Furthermore, features like option to book yearly maintenance orders upfront, loyalty programme that incentivises the regular buyers are some of the USP that makes them unique in this space.
Tuning in with young generation
In tune with the smartphone generation, Timesaverz mobile app suite enables easy booking, tracking, payment process for a range of home services including a wallet option. It also improves job prospects with locality based job alerts, getting peer rating, recording the time taken to complete the job etc. and targets enabling one million service providers across multiple cities in India.
What future holds for them
Receiving an overwhelming response from their customers end, the startup is working on to add 2-3 more categories. As of today, with a service range spread across 40 categories, aided by a fast expanding network of over 2500 service partners across 5 metros -- Mumbai, NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune -- Timesaverz caters to almost 70 per cent of all home services' requirements.
"Expansion is two pronged for us – service led and geography determined. We are currently getting our groundwork ready for expansion into other key metros and increasing our bouquet of services to enable Timesaverz as a one-stop home management app in the truest sense," said Upadhyaya.
Currently servicing around 50K requests a month which is growing at a 100 per cent MoM, startup on an average receives 32 per cent of repeat customers from their existing one.
Entrepreneur's Take
Dealing in local services market, Timesaverz is trying to tap over $50 billion market which is growing exponentially. Local services market has become the latest buzzing trend among the entrepreneurs as more and more startups are mushrooming in this space. Now we have to see that how far this segment will continue to be the apple of an eye of the investors. 2016 is crucial for Timesaverz as they have big plans to expand this year.
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