Home services startup Timesaverz raises $2.3M from Unilazer

Mumbai-based Timesaverz Dotcom Pvt Ltd, which owns and operates online marketplace for home services Timesaverz.com, has raised $2.3 million (Rs 15 crore) in Series A funding from Ronnie Screwvala's Unilazer Ventures.

The company will use the funds to expand into new markets, bolster technology infrastructure and strengthen product portfolio, it said in a statement.

"Timesaverz started as a two-hub operational company in Mumbai two years ago and has since grown to cater to one service request every three seconds and manages fulfilment through over 1,000 Timesaverz partners...since the launch of its new interface both on web and mobile, Timesaverz has been witnessing a 3X growth in visitations and 80 per cent of the traffic is through mobile," said Debadutta Upadhyaya, co-founder and CEO of Timesaverz.

The startup was co-founded by Upadhyaya and Lovnish Bhatia in July 2012 while operations started almost a year later. Before this, Debadutta was leading video ad network Vdopia's APAC business. Prior to that, she was heading sales for Yahoo India. Bhatia, on the other hand, has held leadership positions at Vdopia, Aptech, Sony Entertainment Television, NDTV Media and Viacom 18.

Timesaverz connects home service seekers with providers. It currently has a network of over 1,000 partners for services such as cleaning, handymen jobs, appliances repair and errands co-ordination. Its partners go through background checks and skill-sets verification processes. The company then uses its proprietary algorithms to assign the right service partner to complete the job. On-time delivery of services is ensured through 'live' tracking of the entire process.

The company started operations in Mumbai and has expanded to Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Noida and Pune.

"On-demand home services comprise the new frontier of e-commerce where service is now a product. Large companies are going to be created in this space and we will work closely with the founders to make Timesaverz a leader in an existing $5 billion industry with immense growth potential," said Screwvala.

"Our decision to back the company was driven by the operational efficiency demonstrated by an experienced team and the social impact it has created among the unorganised but skilled service partners," he added.

Timesaverz was one of the 12 startups that graduated from GSF Accelerator's 2013 summer batch.

In October last year, it had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by internet business professional Neville Taraporewalla and GSF Superangels founder Rajesh Sawhney. Other investors who participated in the round included eTailing India founder Ashish Jhalani; Nitesh Kripalani, former digital business head at Sony Entertainment; as well as GSF Superangels like Indiamart founder Dinesh Agarwal; and Nish Bhutani, COO of Saffronart.

Although a new concept in the Indian context, the home service space now has a slew of companies, many of whom have raised significant VC investments.

The latest to raise money was Fixy, a Mumbai-based startup providing maintenance services on demand. It secured seed funding from members of VentureNursery. Earlier this month, DoorMint had raised nearly $3 million in Series A funding led by Helion Ventures and Kalaari Capital.

Other companies that have raised funding are: UrbanClap (Accel and Saif Partners), 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 and Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Venture).