20-minute pitch wins backing for Indian startup Pronto from Lachy Groom

Lachie Groome, one of Silicon Valley’s most watched individual investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes after his first meeting with its 24-year-old founder.

The meeting, which took place in February through a back-and-forth connection, led to Groom investing $20 million in Pronto as an extension of its Series B round, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment — double its valuation just over two months ago, as TechCrunch previously reported. The deal was reached within weeks, bringing the individual investor on board as the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet the growing demand for on-demand home services in India.

Groom said he was attracted to Pronto’s ambition to build what he described as the world’s largest platform for organizing domestic workers, starting with India’s vast and largely unorganized workforce. “It’s really difficult to work under, and most of the attempts in adjacent categories have suffered from operational discipline,” he said, adding that Pronto founder Anjali Sardana (pictured above) and her team were working “at a level I haven’t seen anywhere else in this space.”

Before founding Pronto in 2025, Sardana worked at Bain Capital and venture firm 8VC, where she gained early experience in investing and high-growth startups. The startup connects families with workers to perform daily tasks such as cleaning and basic household services.

The introduction was arranged through Paul Hudson, founder of Glade Brook Capital, who connected Groom and Sardana during her trip to San Francisco earlier this year. Gladebrook has backed startups founded by Pronto, which Sardana leads, and Physic Intelligence, which Groom co-founded. Hudson and Groom also backed Indian express commerce startup Zepto.

Sardana said Groom’s investment approach depends largely on the founder. “He indexes two things. One is the founder, and that’s 95% of him. If he likes the founder, he will invest,” she told TechCrunch, adding that the rest depends on the size and potential of the business.

Grom’s bet comes as a host of startups in India race to build platforms for instant home services, a category seeing rapid adoption among urban households as more consumers turn to on-demand help with daily tasks.

Opportunity is important. A recent Bank of America note, reviewed by TechCrunch, estimates that India’s instant home services market could grow into a $15 billion to $18 billion industry by the end of the decade, with companies including Pronto, Snapbit, and Urban Company’s InstaHelp vying for share in the fast-growing category.

Competition is intense, with large capital inflows and aggressive pricing, especially to attract first-time users. Bank of America estimates that Snapbit and Urban Company’s InstaHelp each represent about 40% of the market, while Pronto has about 20% of the share, even as it expands rapidly. This category is expected to remain “highly burned” over the next two or three years.

Although it lags behind larger competitors, Pronto has been expanding rapidly, growing from about 18,000 bookings per day to 26,000 in just over a month. The startup is focused on driving repeat usage, and is betting that turning casual demand into habit-based repeat usage will be key to winning in this category, where the top 10% of users account for about 40% of bookings.

This growth has also brought challenges, especially in building supply. Pronto expanded its network of service workers to 6,500, up from 1,440 in January. But demand still outstrips supply, making forecasting and capacity management key challenges as the startup grows, Sardana said.