According to Major Prashant Rai, Founder and CEO, Onetimejobs, the home services industry in India is growing rapidly and accounts to $10 billion plus industry.
Speaking about the scope for start-ups in this space, Rai said, “There is a growing need for such platforms as the range of services provided by these platforms is huge. One can select from a wide range of services and get them delivered at their doorstep at just a click. We get 50 to 80 clients on a daily basis. There are at least 10-15 million households with this need today in India and each would typically spend anywhere between Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 10,000 a year on any of these services like plumbing, electrical or carpentry. It is very apt to say that this sector is fast catching the attention of VCs”
Snapdeal conducted a case study regarding the size of home maintenance service industry in India. With 3 Billion+ jobs completed annually, it has been called one of the largest disorganized markets in India.
Rai further informed that the changes are on demand service market place. Paying potential has improved resulting in innovation of technology driven market place for services.
This online home maintenance sector is unorganized; thus the first challenge is to find well-trained professionals as service provider partners. The second biggest challenge is retaining the loyalty of your vendors and customers, and matching them in the best possible way. Being a B2C market, reaching out to target customers and marketing with budget constraints for any start-up are one of the biggest challenges.
Rai informed that the biggest market is for cleaning services, painting jobs and other personalized services. In non-tear 1 cities the demand is growing fast. As of earlier, the same services were not available on demand marketplace.
“The future of online home service providers seems very bright as more and more people are looking out for services through market place. The paying capacity has improved for the customers and everything is available on click of a button. The demand will increase multiple times,” concluded Rai.
