Gapoon, a Bengaluru-based home maintenance services startup has raised ₹1.6 crore ($250,000) in its pre-Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Vida Ventures, along with the participation from independent investors including Snehal Mantri, director, marketing and HR at Mantri Group and Anshu Bahadur, partner at Cognizant.
Existing investors of the startup Chandrashekar Tallapragada, a veteran of the telecommunications industry, and Pankaj Kapoor, an investment banker, have also participated in the latest funding round.
In a statement, Apoorva Mishra, co-founder and CEO of the company, said that the funding will be used to launch new product initiatives, strengthen technology platform, penetrate deeper into market segments and expand to other cities. He added:
While customers (both homes and businesses) avail of the benefits of our subscription product, the vendors earn up to 40% higher compared with other aggregators. This model drives a favourable unit economics which is easier to replicate in multiple cities.
Ankit Solanki, advisor at Vida Ventures, said,
We have always believed in the opportunity in the on-demand and subscription-based services for property maintenance. It was a question of finding the right balance. Gapoon’s technology optimises a key element of the equation—cost of acquiring supply and servicing clients.
Gapoon was founded in 2015 by Apoorva Mishra, Ankit Bindal, Ankita Asai and Nikhil Gupta. It raised first round of angel funding in July 2015 and secured an additional funding in March last year.
The startup provides subscription packages offering annual maintenance cover for homes and businesses to house owners, developers, property management aggregators, restaurants and retail outlets. It also operates on an on-demand basis for handyman services like plumbing, electrical, deep cleaning, pest control and civil work.