Home services aggregator EasyFix raises funds from Axilor

Gurgaon-based Easyfix Handy Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operates an online aggregation platform for home maintenance and repair services under EasyFix, has raised an undisclosed amount in its first round of institutional funding from Axilor Venture Capital, a seed stage investment and incubator set up by Infosys co-founders SD Shibulal and Kris Gopalakrishnan.

EasyFix plans to use the money to expand its geographical reach to 15 cities. In addition, the company will concentrate on tech-enablement of its on-field professionals and improving services' delivery turn-around time, it said in a press statement.

Founded in 2011 by Shaifali Agarwal Holani, EasyFix provides repair and maintenance services for carpentry, electrical work and plumbing at homes and offices. It does not employ the service providers but aggregate them while connecting them to consumers online.

"We've been running the business profitably on our own for a fairly long time. We see a huge untapped potential for growth. This also made us realise that raising capital will help us scale up faster and better. Axilor is the right investor to take us through to the next stage of our growth trajectory," Holani said.

She said the company will also invest on expanding its professional network from 2,000 to 5,000.

Axilor was founded by the Infosys duo along with Tarun Khanna, Srinath Batni and Ganapathy Venugopal. This investment is made by the individual funds of Axilor's founders through its early stage funding programme.

The local services online marketplace business has been attracting a lot of investor attention this year.

Fixy, a Mumbai-based startup that provides maintenance services on demand, had raised seed funding from members of VentureNursery, an angel-backed accelerator for startups last month. Another on-demand home services startup DoorMint raised nearly $3 million in Series A funding led by Helion Ventures and Kalaari Capital recently.

Other companies which raised funding include UrbanClap (Accel Partners 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 & Mayfield India) and UrbanPro.com (Nirvana Venture). These also compete with Just Dial, the top player in the local services search market.