Housejoy raises $22.4M from Amazon, others

Home services marketplace Housejoy, run by Sarvaloka Services On Call Pvt Ltd, has raised Rs 150 crore ($22.4 million) in a Series B round of funding from a group of investors led by e-commerce giant Amazon, it said on Wednesday.

Other investors who participated in this round include Temasek's venture arm Vertex Ventures, Qualcomm and Ru-Net Technology Partners along with Housejoy's existing backer Matrix Partners.

The money will be used to boost up technology, acquisitions and partnerships besides building the team. The firm aims to be present in more than 10 cities and bring 50,000 service providers on its platform to cater to 100,000 jobs per day.

The Bangalore-based startup was launched in January 2015 by Sunil Goel. Goel, an alumnus of SP Jain Institute of Management, had previously founded cloud-based video screening solution called VuFirst. He has also worked with TutorVista, Tesco, Planetasia and Samsung.

The company that had raised $4 million in Series A funding from Matrix Partners, offers a platform to find and book local service providers for maintenance and home repairs to plumbing, electrical, computer repairs and also specialised services in beauty and in-house bridal make-up. It currently operates in nine cities. It claims to fulfill 4,000 orders a day.

Recently, Housejoy had appointed Saran Chatterjee as CEO. Chatterjee earlier worked with Flipkart as vice president of product management and a key part of Flipkart's leadership team for three years. He was also with Yahoo for about six years in various roles.

For Amazon, this is the third such investment in an Indian startup. It has earlier backed QwikCilver and also led a large investment round in BankBazaar.

"Housejoy seeks to provide customers with a differentiated experience in shopping for home services. This aligns with our mission in India - to transform the way India buys and sells," said Amit Agarwal, vice president and country manager, Amazon India.

In the home services marketplace space, Delhi-based UrbanClap Technologies India Pvt Ltd had raised $25 million (Rs 165 crore) in its Series B round of funding last month from Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel Partners and SAIF Partners.

Other competitors include LocalOye, UrbanPro and Qyk among several others many of whom have also raised early-stage funding.

Early signs of consolidation has started showing up with Paytm acquiring Near.in and last month, Mumbai-based TaskBob acquired Zepper.

All these firms are competing with public listed Just Dial, the biggest online local business search directory in the country.