Twice in a day, has a startup offering local services marketplace received funding, testimonising rapid growth of such services in India. Zimmber, a Mumbai-based on-demand home services platform has now raised $400K in fresh funding round from the founding team of InMobi. The company has also acqui-hired Dhulai, a Mumbai-based start-up providing laundry services as a part of the process.
Investors of this round include InMobi’s co-founders Mohit Saxena and Amit Gupta, chief product officer Piyush Shah and Manish Dugar, vice-president of finance. Dhulai was founded three year ago and has a team of 10 members. All the members of the team will join Zimmber to lead its new laundry section.
Founded in October last year by Anubhab Goel, Gaurav Shrivastava and Amit Kumar, Zimmber is an online platform for users to book home services such as fixing of a dripping flush tank or electrical glitch, or installation of an air conditioner. It currently operates in Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Gurgaon and Thane. UrbanClap, Zimmber’s bigger rival, just raised a $10 Million round from SAIF and Accel.
Zimmber’s acquisition, Dhulai (Hindi for washing) allows you to place an order on your phone or tablet, including pickup and drop-off time scheduling. Their agent arrives at the time you scheduled to pick up your laundry and dry cleaning, and within 48-72 hours your clothes are delivered in reusable non-plastic bags, washed and folded.
Earlier, the company has raised about $500K in funding from a group of angel investors, including Pavan Sinha – co founder and Managing Director of Jabong. It claims to have more than 400 service providers on its platform. The company launched its mobile app earlier in January.
Zimmber is tapping into the skilled workforce through National Skill Development Corporation, thus making it a verified platform automatically. To make sure that the workers come to them, it will soon start offering a debit card and will establish a line of credit for the workers. Both these measures, if implemented effectively, could be a game-changer in India’s scattered, under-scored blue caollar jobs market.
It has listed frequently-occurring problems on its site, so that you have to just select the problem from the drop-down menu. If the problem is unique, then the platform will help you to define it. Once booked, the firm will contact you to confirm your availability and then it will send a service provider to your home/office.
The company claims to get over 100 orders a day and has over 400 people servicing across nine categories. It is planning to expand its services to 20 categories and to 37 cities by March 2016. It also plans to raise $12 million in funding by September, further details of which remain undisclosed.
InMobi’s CEO Naveen Tewari, said,
“This is high time when a company like Zimmber does the comprehensive and holistic work on uplifting the ecosystem. We believe in the model and team, and will continue to back Zimmber in our own ways.”
Zimmber will compete with the likes of LocalOye, Housejoy, UrbanClap, UrbanPro, Taskbob, etc. LocalOye recently raised $5 million from Tiger Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners while UrbanPro received $2 million from Nirvana Ventures. Today, UrbanClap also secured $10 million from SAIF Partners and Accel Partners.
