Indian company Pronto formalizes home help as its valuation jumps 8-fold in less than a year

Bengaluru-based Pronto is helping bring India’s largely informal home help market online. As daily bookings rise and the city expands, investors are opening their wallets.

The startup said Tuesday it has raised a $25 million Series B round led by Epiq Capital, valuing the nine-month-old company at $100 million. That’s more than double its $45 million valuation in August 2025 and more than eight times the $12.5 million level when it came out of stealth in May. Existing investors Glade Brook Capital, General Catalyst and Bain Capital Ventures also participated, bringing total funding to approximately $40 million.

Pronto offers fast, organized services for everyday tasks — from cleaning to cleaning utensils — promising trained, background-certified professionals on call.

The startup says it can dispatch workers in about 10 minutes to many of its micromarkets (serviceable locations within the cities where it operates), making the service more akin to express commerce than traditional home services. Each worker — whom the company calls a “professional” — undergoes personal training and a background check before bookings are made, and is assigned to structured shifts aimed at providing a more predictable income than the informal arrangements common in the sector.

Pronto is now handling 18,000 bookings a day, a sharp rise from about 1,000 daily bookings last year, founder Anjali Sardana (pictured above, middle) said in an interview. She added that the average time between a customer’s first and second booking is only two days, with the top 10% of platform users submitting nine or more orders per month. Sardana said the startup is targeting 70,000 daily bookings by June.

The startup has also moved quickly to expand its geographic footprint, expanding from one city to 10 cities — including Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Mumbai — and from five to more than 150 micro markets in the past seven months, Sardana said. However, the bulk of activity remains concentrated in a few markets, with the National Capital Region, which includes cities surrounding New Delhi, accounting for about half of total bookings.

Sardana said Pronto has barely begun to tap into India’s local offline services market, where most hiring still happens through informal networks. “I still think 99.99% of this market is completely offline,” she told TechCrunch. “In total, less than 100,000 people use a service like this every day, while tens of millions of households rely on offline arrangements.”

Market research supports this. The overall home services sector, according to a Redseer Strategy Consultants report, was estimated to be worth INR 5,100 to INR 5,210 billion (about US$56 billion to US$57 billion) in FY 2025. However, internet penetration was less than 1% of net transaction value, highlighting how well-established word-of-mouth channels remain. But the internet sector — currently small — is expected to grow at a compound annual rate of 18% to 22% through fiscal 2030, as rising incomes, urbanization and demand for reliability and convenience push more households to try digital platforms.

Building the workforce

Sardana said Pronto currently works with 4,500 active professionals on its platform, about 99% of whom are women. Workers who complete approximately 20 days of shifts per month earn an average of 23,000 to 25,000 rupees (about $251 to $273), she added. The monthly employee retention rate exceeds 70%. However, demand continues to outstrip new workers, with bookings growing about 20% weekly, the founder said.

Pronto’s unit economics continue to evolve as it expands into new markets. Sardana said the company is seeing “very positive green shoots” in its oldest micro market in Gurugram, where contribution margins have turned positive, even though the newer markets remain in investment mode.

Sardana told TechCrunch that Pronto has spent about $8 million so far and now has nearly two years of runway after its last fundraising campaign.

Sardana said Pronto plans to deploy the fresh capital primarily toward qualifying more professionals, deepening its presence in existing markets, and expanding into new cities. It is also experimenting with new offerings such as cooking, car washing and dog walking and is exploring additional categories, including salon services. However, for now, basic tasks — including sweeping, mopping, and cleaning tools — remain the most used services on the platform.

The startup operates with a core team of about 60 employees, including approximately 15 to 16 employees in engineering, product and design, while marketing remains lean with a small brand and performance team, Sardana said.

Competition

Pronto operates in an increasingly hot segment of India’s home services market, alongside rivals such as Snapbit and publicly listed Urban Company. Snapbit raised $30 million in late October at a valuation of $180 million — more than doubling in five months — and reported about 830,000 orders in February, up from about 500,000 in December. Meanwhile, Urban Company said its platform surpassed 50,000 daily bookings in February.

Sensor Tower data reviewed by TechCrunch indicates that Pronto’s number of daily active users increased about 37% to about 101,000 between late January and late February, compared to Snapbit’s growth of about 30% to about 93,000 daily users during the same period.

Sardana said Pronto remains focused on quality service as competition intensifies. “At the end of the day, customers will land on the platform that provides the highest quality service,” she said.