BWDisrupt interacted with the core founding team of befikr.in Chirajay Sharma,Sunny Trehan, Sumit Srivastava. Their passion to create a brand and a social movement seemed to be the most important binding thread between the thread between the three.
Story Behind Inception-The company was formally registered on 4th Jan 2016 as M/s. Opera Gratia Private Limited, 258, Gokul Bhawan, GF Lane No 4, westend Marg, Saket Delhi 110017, however, the ground work and the detailed research started 6 months before that to ensure the meticulous planning is translated into seamless execution.
befikr.in can be best described asa startup dedicated towards organizing the unorganized Home services through an in-house team of trained and expert befikr brothers and helpinga household get rid of all of their fikrs in a timely, efficient and most cost-effective manner.
A one-stop shop for all home service befikr especially, electrical, plumbing, carpentry, air conditioning, pest control, car dry cleaning, sofa-carpet dry cleaning and home deep cleaning with a vision to become the Global Synonym of Home Services and focus on world class service standards.
Solving the Problem- The huge gap in the Home Services space between the customers’ expectation v/s existing service standards was too glaring for us to ignore and be content with our cushy jobs. We had this dream of doing something which will not only disrupt the existing systems but also bring changes to the life of thousands of lives. That’s where we decided to organize the unorganized home service space as a true service focused company which will solve real problems and not just ease a part of the value chain.
No one else was daring to do this & there was an immense scope to change a fixed mind-set that blue collared handymen can never be employees in India. The households fikrs were un attended & we knew the secret to resolve them by not being aggregators like our competition.
We took the plunge by launching with a small team from Noida & within 3 months tasted the initial success. This small experience gave us a small belief that there is an immense need in India to organize the home service space & thus the decision to go aggressive was taken.
befikr.in is efficiently solving this problem of common households through a three-pronged strategy – People, Training & Efficient Operation
Philosophy- We are differentiating by being commercially honest /upfront about our prices & also having an in house well trained team of befikr brothers.befikr.in is solving this problem of getting the right handyman and providing a seamless Home Service experience through:
• In-house Team of befikr brothers
• Focused Training Program to develop people on the ground
• Cluster-centric Approach to cater households in an efficient manner
"We are not aggregators but have an in-house team of befikr brothers, the In-House team of people are the biggest competitive advantage as we strive to create a Product “befikr brother” out of the Services.
• In-house trained professionals to ensure the control on the entire value chain as compared to existing aggregators where everyone is just focusing on creating a refined yellow pages
• Salaried professionals just focus on making a family befikr, no matter how small the FIKR is as compared to existing aggregators
• befikr brothers knock your door in proper uniform & are technically trained to ensure quality service as compared to existing aggregators
• Each befikr brother is trained to provide a uniform & top notch service experience as compared to existing aggregators
Investment- The business was bootstrapped till we had a perfect “proof of concept”. We raised angel funding to the tune of $0.5 million in the month of January and are in advance talks to raise Series-A round of ~$5 million.
The entire manpower is on salary model; we don’t earn our revenue from commissions. Our own employees visit customers & charge the fee as laid on website. With a positive unit economics and an average ticket size of ₹400, we have a well-defined revenue model which is helping our initial launched clusters break even within the 1st 6 months of operations.
We also have an opportunity to build business on the loyal households through a long term prepaid commercial relationship.
We are getting an everyday traction of 200-250 calls/day &have already catered to around 40,000 calls resulting in close to 30,000 befikr Families acrossDelhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad& Pune. The future growth plans will have two levers – Geographical Expansion and Broader Service Portfolio.
Ideating About the Future- We have an aggressive expansion plan & will build the model cluster over cluster & city by city eventually catering to top 100 cities over the next 4 years. Incidentally, most of the announced smart cities are already under our strategic growth plans.
Simultaneously, we have also outlined the launch of new services in addition to our current offering & have a vision to become a Global Synonym of Home Services.
During this course, the mission would be to establish a sustainable & scalable home services brand through excellence, thus aspiring to be a ₹500 crore company by 2020.
We will be going for an aggressive marketing campaign starting 1st Jan 2017 in Delhi, NCR & Pune with a strong footprint on the digital & social media space.
Challenges & Obstacles- One of the biggest challenge is to change the mindset of the people of the country and bridge the trust deficit between a common handymen and a household. Eventually, this becomes an opportunity as we believe India will change to a more dignified environment for skilled labors and we will be the Drivers of the Change.
With a near to zero attrition rate, inspite of being a manpower intensive model, our challenge would be gain speed & momentum in scaling up fast & early without compromising on any of the defined quality parameters.
Opportunities Ahead- The market is very fragmented and the value is scattered among more than 250 million households in the entire country. Just the urban opportunity comprises of ~80 million households. To put things into perspective, the urban households residing in 100 major cities is equivalent to UK, France and Italy in terms of number of households and more than double the size of Canada.
With the industry of homes services being unorganized, the market estimation is itself a formative task, yet can be articulated through the urban household data. An ET article pegged the market at $100 billion, however, as per our estimates, the target market for our service portfolio ranges between $10 billion - $12 billion.
BW Reporters
Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
