BENGALURU: Last two-three years have witnessed the emergence of a whole new category of on-demand service providers. These Indian start-ups offer a wide range of services starting from electrical and plumbing services to security services to fire safety services to event photography.
The service providers are increasingly engaging with corporates by providing their services after initially having individuals as customers. The startups are scaling up by engaging with corporates, and expanding from B2C to B2B.
OneTimeJobs.com, a Bengaluru-based resources aggregator offers a bouquet of services to corporates including civil engineering works, one-time security, event guarding services, fire/security audits, legal services, office automation, event organisation, background verification among other services.
Prashant Rai, Founder and CEO, OneTimeJobs, told Express, “The margins are good in B2B model. There is also greater variety of jobs, and thus a chance to multiply revenue faster.” While he offers services only in four to five cities, he hopes to touch some 100 cities once he ties up funds.
According to Siddhartha Das of Aasaanjobs, a blue-collar (skilled and unskilled workers) technology platform, it began to focus on the B2B space as the retention rate was higher. Das has been seeing an 85 per cent growth year-on-year. He today has over 500 clients. He is currently only in Mumbai and Pune and aims to add Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad.
Debadutta Upadhyaya, Founder, Timesaverz, too had found his manna in the B2B space. “A lot of customers we service give us a foot in the door of corporate customers. If we get one B2B customer, then it helps us get more business,” said Upadhyaya. It offers laundry service, pest control services, repair services and cleaning services.
It has 50 employees and 300 service partner companies. About 30 per cent of them are businesses. “During Diwali, it’s B2B that’s key. In summer, B2C picks up. “The B2B space gives the volumes,” said Upadhyaya. In B2B, he added, you can’t have too much price variance. It started in Mumbai in 2014, and entered Bengaluru in April 2015.
It has raised Series A from Unilazer of `15 crore in August, 2015. The company claims to be well-funded for 12 months of operations.