Home services startup Housejoy has acquired online laundry services player My-Wash in a deal underlining further consolidation in the nascent home services market, where venture capital funding has started drying up.
The deal would give Amazon backed Housejoy a foothold in “a strategic category” to help drive repeat customer usage.
MyWash was founded in 2014 by BITS Pilani alumni Silus Chintapalli and Raghu Bharat along with Anna University engineering graduate Balaji Ashok. About 10 core team members, along with the three founders, are expected to join Housejoy with the deal.
The exact terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Housejoy will give stock to MyWash team. Housejoy CEO Saran Chatterjee said that there is no cash payment involved in the transaction.
“This category has a lot of complexities and needs operational expertise, which MyWash team with two years of experience will help accelerate,” said Chatterjee, who is looking to scale to 10,000 services per day over the next year for the laundry vertical.
Housejoy offers laundry services in Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Chennai.
The well-funded startups in local and home services space like UrbanClap and Sulekha are scouting for acquisitions in high frequency categories like laundry and beauty.
Housejoy, which raised .`150 crore in December 2015, is in talks for more acquisitions, according to Chatterjee. MyWash had raised $1 million in funding from early-stage fund Orios Venture Partners, and then was in talks with investors like South African internet and media giant Naspers for series-A.
Source: The Economic Times
