 "Taskbob.com acquires Zepper.in")
Taskbob, a Mumbai-based home services startup run by Crenovative Ideas, has secured $4.5 million (around Rs 30 crore) in a Series-A round of funding led by venture capital fund IvyCap Ventures, as it seeks to boost its growth and increase dominance in the hyperlocal services sector. The funding round also saw participation from existing investors Orios and Mayfield.
The one-year-old startup, founded by IIT-Bombay and IIM-Ahmedabad alumni Aseem Khare, Abhiroop Medhekar, Ajay Bhatt and Amit Chahalia, intends to employ the funds to selectively expand its presence in multiple markets, focus on product growth and innovation and evaluate strategic acquisition opportunities. Taskbob has acquired Bengaluru-based home services player Zepper.in in November 2015.
Taskbob, which provides pre-screened service experts across a range of home services like cleaning, handymen services and drivers, currently has around 100,000 users in Mumbai, achieving scale of 800 to 1,000 bookings a day.
Over the next 18 months, Taskbob plans to scale up to 10,000 orders per day and achieve profitability at a unit level in Mumbai before it attempts to replicate the model in the top 4-5 cities across the country.
"Fulfilment, not discovery, is the real problem in India's local services space. With this in mind, we have been more focussed on supply and fulfilment issues rather than plain demand aggregation. Our goal has always been to build a service that provides quality and is absolutely trustworthy," Aseem Khare, co-founder and chief executive officer of Taskbob, said in a statement on Monday.
