Servicesquare in Chennai connects consumers with service providers such as house-keepers, painters etc
Algorithm has also been successful in decreasing login errors (Representational Image)
Chennai: Cleaning his house was always a nightmare for Chennai-based Vivek Narayanan, as it is for most people. It is strenuous and time-consuming if done by oneself. It can be frustrating and may result in waste of money if local hands hired turn out to be incompetent. Narayanan, a 31-year-old internet services employee, instead decided to try a digital solution for complete tidying up of his three-bedroom abode at Ashok Nagar. He logged on to Servicesquare, an online platform based in Chennai that connects consumers with service providers such as house-keepers, painters, carpenters and electricians.
He was in for a surprise – a four-member, uniformed crew arrived on time and in a day cleaned every nuke and corner of the house including toilets and kitchen. The team rendered professional service, collected its fee as ment-i-oned while booking. Nar-a-yanan was also asked to fill out a out a feedback rating the service. “I neither had to keep chasing them nor did I have to bargain,” said Narayanan. “The workers were very professional, courteous and the service was very good.”
Servicesquare is just one of the many hyper-local start-ups that have come up in the past few years in the city, offering services including home nursing and housekeeping, all in a professional fashion.“The whole segment is very niche and has just emerged,” said Babu Vincent, managing director, Servicesquare. “Currently, professional companies such as ours hold only less than 5 per c-ent of this market. There is a huge opportunity to tap,” he said. The company is receiving around 1,000 enquires a month. Of these, more than 50 per cent are getting converted into services.
Many of these compani es hire workers and train them. Apart from technic-al training, the companies also train them on soft skills, and work ethics. In certain niche areas, these companies act as a service aggregator.
Apart from training, they also do background verifications of the workers and bring in price transparency. Sunil Goel, Co-founder of HouseJoy, a Bengaluru-based online platform that provides 14 services including plumbing, pest control appliances services, electrical services, etc, said, “This space was traditionally dominated by neighbourhood vendors. In the digital space, people can only relay on search directories such as JustDial.”
With professional companies operating through online channels coming into this space, consumers can avail quality services, he said. HouseJoy provides services in Chennai as well. Though charges are on the higher side, these companies ensure quality of the job and the service provider is accountable to customers, users said. Some companies are even providing job insurance if anything goes wrong and will redo the job for services such as plumbing and electrical works if the problem reoccurs within a week.
Uma Mani, an IT professional at Mylapore, availed nursing services for her ailing father through Healthabove60, an online homecare service prov-ider. The whole system is relatively hassle free compared with traditional services, she said. “Even if the charges are a bit higher, the quality of services and better co-ordination leave us free of tension,” she said. These companies rely on digital marketing as well as social media platforms to promote themselves. “We are very aggressive on Facebook and other social networking platforms. We are also going to launch a mobile app soon so that people can book services on-the-go and at their convenience,” said Vincent of Servicesquare.
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