Home services startup DoorMint raises $3M

Mumbai-based DoorMint, an on-demand home services startup, has raised nearly $3 million in Series A funding led by Helion Ventures and Kalaari Capital.

The money will be used to expand the company's service network in Mumbai and for venturing into cities such as Delhi, Gurgaon and Bengaluru over the next three months, as per a press statement. It will also invest the funds to improve its technology backbone, streamline operations and increase headcount.

"On-demand home services is a fast-growing market in urban areas where tech savvy consumers seek time-saving resources to meet their household needs of maintenance and repair. DoorMint's key differentiation of a branded service nature that takes full responsibility for service delivery and customer satisfaction along with convenient and superior product offerings such as one-touch home service to eliminate calling, upfront pricing and post service warranty are pegged to make it the market leader," said Ritesh Banglani, partner at Helion Ventures.

DoorMint, led by a team of more than 40 people, connects service providers with consumers through its app and online portal. Users can connect with professionals for services such as plumbing, laundry, sofa cleaning, drilling, wiring and others.

"We aim to provide affordable, technology driven home solutions to consumers. The latest investment comes as a major shot in the arm, enabling us to expand and consolidate our service network in Mumbai while also proliferating in other metro cities," said Abhinav Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of DoorMint. Agarwal is an alumnus of IIT Bombay; he worked as a consultant with McKinsey for two years before co-founding DoorMint in 2015.

DoorMint's rival UrbanClap received funding of $10 million from SAIF Partners and Accel Partners recently while another competitor Zimmber raised $2 million from a bunch of investors.

Similar companies which raised funding include LocalOye (Tiger Global and Lightspeed), Qyk (Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn.com; and Delhivery co-founder Sahil Barua), Near.in (led by Anupam Mittal, CEO of People Group and Manish Vij of Smile Vun Group), FindYahan (led by Karan Bajwa, managing director of Microsoft India), TaskBob (Orios Venture Partners & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Venture).

Till recently, the fragmented and unorganised local services market was being served through local business listing firms such as Just Dial. In that model, users received phone numbers and also got direct calls from professionals/service providers after they posted their requirements.

Just Dial is also transitioning from being purely a provider of local search and related information to being an enabler of such transactions. Currently separate set of firms cater to products related sales (e-commerce) and booking local services. Just Dial is trying to integrate both in a single platform leveraging on its deep penetration with local businesses service providers.