An e-commerce platform for home services in the Philippines has raised US$1.6 million in a seed round.
The Berlin-based company entered Singapore in 2015. After raising about US$22.3 million in investments, it’s eyeing expansion into new markets including Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year.
The company sees a great opportunity in major urban areas across Southeast Asia and is particularly focused on expanding into Vietnam and Thailand in late 2020 or early 2021.
The fresh capital will be used to fuel its growth and expand across Southeast Asia. It also looks to make additional hires over the next 12 months to support its plans.
The Manila-based startup offers a suite of home services such as home cleaning, laundry delivery, and repairs.
At the same time, it also helps small entrepreneurs and gig workers find new customers by taking their businesses online.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has also added special disinfection cleaning services to its offerings.
With the rapid growth of mobile internet penetration and e-commerce spending in the Philippines, the company said it sees great growth potential in building a platform specialized for the services economy.
The company says it already handles 10,000 jobs a month with 70% of daily bookings coming from repeat customer in its first year of operations.
The global market for online home services was expected to be a significant in 2020 in terms of growth and revenue prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now poised to significantly beat predictions.
Other market research analysts forecast the global online on-demand home services market to grow at a CAGR of close to 49% during the period 2017-2021.
The demand for online on-demand home services is increasing due to easy convenience and accessibility.
The increase in smartphone penetration is enabling the demand for online on-demand services. Growing smartphone adoption and internet penetration enables consumers to access the online on-demand services.
In recent years, rapid urbanization has led to major changes in the lifestyle of people in both developed and developing countries.
The increase in disposable income has led to an increase in expenditure, which has, in turn, increased the popularity of on-demand home services.
Growing urbanization is leading to the growth of global online on-demand home services as rather than battling the traffic to avail services, customers prefer to get these services in the comfort of their home.
