//

The deal will help Quikr accelerate its growth in household services, while Zimmber will benefit from the synergies it has with QuikrServices and will also enter new markets

India’s leading cross category online classifieds business Quikr has acquired on-demand household services startup Zimmber in an all-stock deal. While the size of the deal has not been officially disclosed, a report by Mint has pegged the amount at US$10 million.

The deal will help Quikr accelerate its growth in household services, while Zimmber will benefit from the synergies it has with QuikrServices and other Quikr verticals, and will also enter newer markets. Zimmber will continue to serve all of its customers.

As part of the overall integration process, Co-founder & COO Amit Kumar and Chief Product Officer Siddhartha Srivastava, along with other staff workers, will continue to drive Zimmber growth under Quikr. The other founders will move on to pursue their interests.

Started in October 2014 by Kumar, Anubhab Goel (CEO), and Gaurav Shrivastava (CTO), Zimmber provides on demand home services like plumbing, carpentry, pest control, deep cleaning, sofa and carpet cleaning, amongst others. Zimmber pre-checks all its service partners before enrolling them on the platform and further trains them for the gaps in professionalism and service quality. It is currently operational in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Pune. Since inception, the company claims to have on-boarded around 1,500 service providers and served over 100,000 customers.

In 2015, Zimmber had raised sub-US$2 million, co-led by IDG Ventures and Omidyar Network, with participations from Ram Shriram, Founding Board Member of Google through Sherpalo Ventures; TV Mohandas Pai, Chairman of Manipal Global Education & ex-Member of Board of Directors of Infosys through Aarin capital.

According to PD Sundar, Head of QuikrServices: “Household services is an exciting category which is seeing increasing adoption among urban consumers. Given the paucity of time and the increasing level of stress in their everyday lives, these consumers are looking for convenient and reliable solutions to their daily household needs.”

Also Read: Former Quikr execs’ Turtlemint gets funding to personalise your insurance needs

“The acquisition allows us to further scale our deep stack service capabilities and provide a superior service experience to Quikr users for their high frequency daily needs such as plumbing, cleaning etc. This category perfectly complements our existing marketplace solution for one-off service needs such as interior design, packers and movers etc.,” he added.

“Quikr believes in organising unstructured markets and has been going deeper in all its verticals – its broad goal of moving closer to transactions and providing consumers better ways to address their day to day needs directly overlaps with our vision for the household services category. In addition to the synergies between Zimmber and QuikrServices, we also see a great opportunity in offering our services to users in other Quikr verticals such as QuikrHomes, QuikrC2C and QuikrCars. Together, we will be serving a larger customer base with varied demands to bring more trust and efficiency to hyperlocal services market,” said Kumar.

Quikr is one of the largest classifieds platforms used by over 30 million unique users a month. It is present in 1,000 cities in India and operates several large classifieds businesses across C2C, cars, education, homes, jobs and services. It allows consumers as well as small businesses to sell, buy, rent and find things across its multiple categories with great ease.

Quikr’s investors include Tiger Global Management, Kinnevik, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners India, Norwest Venture Partners, Nokia Growth Partners, Steadview Capital, Omidyar Network etc.

Quikr has acquired many companies over the past two years, including Grabhouse, IRX, Hiree, Stayglad, Salosa, Zapulk, Hiree, Salosa, and realtycompass.

In November 2015, Quikr merged with leading real estate portal CommonFloor.

The post eBay-backed Quikr acquires on-demand home services startup Zimmber for US$10M appeared first on e27.

from e27 http://ift.tt/2pMsNuz