Rejuvenate Solutions mops up Rs 12.8 crore in funding

NEW DELHI: Mumbai-based Rejuvenate Solutions, which owns and operates on-demand home services platform Zimmber, has raised about $2 million (Rs 12.8 crore) from a clutch of venture capital investors, a list that includes, IDG Ventures India, Omidyar Network, Sherpalo Ventures and Mohandas Pai.

The announcement comes a month after Zimmber raised $400,000 (Rs 2.5 crore) from InMobi's core founding team, including CEO Naveen Tewari, and also at a time when the home services industry in India continues to see rising investor interest.

Other on-demand home services startups that have recently raised institutional and angel funding include, LocalOye, which raised $5 million (Rs 32 crore) from Tiger Global and Lightspeed Venture Partners, UrbanPro, which received $2 million from Nirvana Ventures, UrbanClap, Taskbob, and Qyk.

“We plan on using the proceeds towards making senior-level hires on the technology front to further build on our product, expand into newer markets, as well as enter new categories,” said Zimmber CEO Anubhab Goel.

Prior to funding round led by the InMobi executives, the startup had raised about $500,000 (Rs 3.2 crore), across rounds, from a group of angel investors, a list that includes, Praveen Sinha, co-founder and managing director of online fashion retailer Jabong, Akhil Chainwala and Alex Kuruvilla of Conde Nast, among others, who have invested in their personal capacities.

Founded in 2014, Zimmber currently has about 400 people providing services across nine categories. It expects to expand to 20 categories and 37 cities by March 2016. Goel also confirmed that the company was scouting for acquisitions, after having made its first, Mumbai-based laundry service Dhulai, for an undisclosed sum, last month.

“Local services is an extremely large problem for consumers in India. Zimmber is successfully trying to regulate the service quality, pricing and vendor base,” said Mohandas Pai, chairman of Manipal Global Education, who has invested through Aarin Capital, the investment firm founded by him and billionaire promoter of Manipal Education and Medical Group Ranjan Pai.

Also, making a comeback to the Indian investment landscape, through this transaction is famed Silicon Valley investor Ram Shriram’s Sherpalo Ventures, which, in 2014, had largely exited its portfolio in the country, through a series of synthetic secondary transactions, to Lightbox, the VC firm co-founded by Sandeep Murthy, who was earlier responsible for all of Sherpalo Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield and Byers’ investments in India.

Sherpalo Ventures is also one of the early backers of InMobi.