Online home services has been one of the fastest growing categories in the past few years. From horizontals to verticals to niche service offerings, from lead based to fulfillment based business models, from marketplace to full stack operations, the category has been witnessing a steady experimentation across geographies.
Launched in April, 2012 and based out of Mumbai, Timesaverz is an Indian on-demand home services marketplace that was founded by Debadutta Upadhyaya (Co-founder & CEO) and Lovnish Bhatia. The company delivers curated and verified home service providers to one's door step and the range of services cover cleaning tasks to appliances repair, handymen jobs to pest control management as well as at home salon services. The company started its operations in April 2013 and aims to help people organize their home jobs meticulously.
It's a simple 3-click process wherein the user has to just (a) choose the service that he/she needs along with the preferred date and time for service (b) pay upfront and avail a special discount or indicate that she would pay once the service is completed and (c) offer feedback on service availed to enjoy loyalty points to be used for future service-bookings.
When asked about the company's USP, Debadutta Upadhyaya, Co-founder & CEO, Timesaverz.com, told BW Businessworld, "Our USP are in the product features that enables multiple service bookings at one go, a loyalty programme titled "earn minutes" , subscription packages that encourage repeats and gift card options." She also highlighted the company's achievements and added that in the last 3 years of operations, the company has moved from 2 localities in Mumbai to a 5 city presence, from pioneering the concept to getting into a ROI positive state in 2 out of the 5 categories it operates in.
Going forward, the company's goal is to expand vertically into the set categories and built a profitable business that genuinely addresses customer's needs. Timesaverz was angel funded by Neville Taraporewalla, Rajesh Sawhney, Ashish Jhalani, and Nitesh Kriplani among others. In 2015, it received Series A funding of $2.5 million from Unilazer Ventures.
Commenting about the challenges she faced in running the business, Debadutta Upadhyaya added, "Constant up-skilling and re-training to maintain the desired standardized service experience is a challenge that is typical to this unorganized sector." Timesaverz has serviced over 100,000 customers across 5 cities and are offering services across some 100+ categories through an efficient and trained network of over 3000 service partners.
Unlike some of the competitors, Timesaverz follows a fulfillment model and not just a lead based model. This means that the company takes responsibility of service delivery right from the time the customer places an order to generating the invoice post service delivery. The credentials of all service providers are checked and a skill test is done prior to on boarding them on the platform. Further, post completion of service a feedback is taken from the customers to ensure that the quality of service is maintained.
At last Debadutta Upadhyaya also spoke about the market size & opportunity, she stated, "As we speak today, we are talking about a 12 million urban online- shopping population that is quite comfortable ordering things and services online at the click of a button. And if one were to look at an average spend that these households make on an annual basis around home-services management it is around Rs 15K. That itself is a $4 billion market size and it growing at a steady 20 per cent Y-o-Y."
