Qyk raises $1M in pre-Series A funding

Bangalore-based Qyk Inc, which runs mobile marketplace for local services Qyk, has raised $1 million in pre-Series A funding led by Delhi-based GrowX Ventures, an early-stage investment firm.

Qyk's existing seed investors such as Tracxn Labs, Powai Lake Ventures, and Sahil Barua (co-founder of Delhivery) also participated in this round, as per a press statement.

"We are delighted to have GrowX as an investor. They believe in our vision of building a frictionless and efficient marketplace for local services," Deepak Singhal, CEO of Qyk, said.

Qyk is a mobile platform that enables customers to hire service providers and professionals near their area. This includes those offering services such as wedding photography or language training besides CAs, interior designers and tax consultants. It also enables customers to compare and get competitive quotes.

The company was founded in October 2014 by IIT-ians Singhal, Sangharsh Boudhh, Shobhit Singhal and Anubhav Sahoo. Sahoo earlier worked at 24/7 Inc, while Singhal was previously associated with JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and Practo.

Boudhh worked at Avaya India, Webaroo Technology and Olacabs prior to founding the startup. Singhal was with Nomura, UrbanTouch, FashionAndYou and InMobi.

"The traditional approach to finding service providers via listings is painful and broken, and leaves both the consumer and the service provider dissatisfied. Qyk is here to change that and dramatically improve the experience of finding any kind of professional help. We've already seen this model see huge success in the US with Thumbtack, and believe that the Qyk team will be the one to make this succeed in India," said Ashish Taneja, MD, GrowX Ventures.

In March this year, the startup had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from a group of investors, including Zishaan Hayath, co-founder, Toppr.com; Abhishek Goyal, co-founder, Tracxn.com; and Delhivery's Barua.

"Having worked earlier with Deepak and the founding team, I am confident of their capabilities in building a scalable business while keeping the pulse of the customer at heart. Looking at their growth and product-oriented positioning in the market, I believe they will be looking at break-away growth and establishing themselves as the market-leader soon," Goyal said.

Since starting operations five months ago in Bangalore, Qyk claims to have added 10,000 professionals across 100 categories on its platform. Qyk has a 70-member strong team today and expects to scale headcount to over 200 in a year. In addition to Bangalore, it offers services in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.

GrowX has already invested in over 15 companies since inception two-and-a-half years ago. Its portfolio companies include AdSparx (video ad tech platform), FortunePay (e-payments processing), ShepHertz (cloud platform for app developers), and Zolijns Designs (furniture and furnishings) in India; Mad Street (artificial intelligence and computer vision technology) and Quandl in Canada, among others.

Companies operating local services on a marketplace model have been attracting a lot of investor attention. On Monday, BookMeIn, an online marketplace for booking hyperlocal services, said it raised $377,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) in angel funding from Ajmera Group of Companies.

Other companies that raised funding include Flatpebble (IAN), Fixy (VentureNursery), UrbanClap (Accel & 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 & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Ventures).