The sun is blazing outside and the heat is unbearable. What happens when your AC decides to ditch you and breakdown in this scorching heat? What do you do in this situation? Scrambling for local directories to find AC repair services near your home is an obvious choice. But then, how reliable are the services or how trustworthy will the professionals turn out to be? Or, how soon will they come to your doorstep for the repair?
These are some of the common questions that surface when we need professionals to manage our everyday household requirements.
Enter ProHandz – Home Services. It is a 360-degree solution that offers 60+ professional services that include but are not limited to – Home Interiors, Home Exteriors, Home Maintenance, Celebrations, Training, Gadget maintenance, Automobiles and Special Services.
Available for residents of Mumbai at present, the app is the best answer for homemakers as well as for working professionals, who require assistance with their household work or other special services like theme decoration, pet grooming or that of hiring an astrologer.
The process to use the app is simple. Just register, select the service of your choice, fill up the form, receive quotes, view profiles of service providers, choose the professional and hire them. This hardly takes a few minutes, after which you can just sit back and relax. The professionals will come to your doorstep at the pre-decided time and carry on with the services.
ProHandz is helmed by Hemant Patel, Vipul Raval, and Gurmeet Singh Bindra and they love to go by the moniker – ‘the three-legged stool’.
While Hemant Patel has more than 15 years of experience in investment banking and institutional equity research, Vipul Raval has made his mark as the youngest Non-German MD in home appliances company Bosch & Siemens and has 12 years of experience in consumer durables. Gurmeet Singh Bindra has a stranglehold in the IT field with two decades of experience in developing software for MNCs.
With their collective experience and experience, the trio aims to build a unique customer interface and marketplace.
“We are of the opinion that our consumer insights and execution capabilities will enable us to win in a competitive marketplace and scale great heights. We also firmly believe that our experience and insights will take us to new heights and achieve many milestones in the years to come.” Remarks Vipul Raval.
How did they come up with the idea of ProHandz?
According to Vipul Raval, “ProHandz started as a Bootstrap model. We took an intern to do basic research about the service requirements of a middle-class household. This research gave us the critical insights to create the app, which meets their requirements aptly. Through our experiences, we knew how tough it is for the customers to find the right service through the multilayer service providers i.e. company, franchise, and technician.
Also, we know and understand that more often than not, it is working professionals and homemakers, who would like to use local services and get the job done within a certain period of time. We wanted to minimize their stress and offer them a reliable solution, with a focus on value addition.
This is what prompted us to start the company and the existing technologies and smartphones made the dream come true.”
Why the name ProHandz?
According to the founders of ProHandz, the home service market is completely unorganized. More often than not, there are customers who are frustrated with widespread unprofessionalism in the industry w.r.t time, expertise, and basic ethics. “Pro” is an acronym for professional as they want the customers to feel that their needs are taken care of by professional hands or “Handz”. Thus, the name ProHandz was zeroed-in.
What makes ProHandz a unique concept and what challenges does it meet?
All the services provided by the ProHandz -Home Services app are of the best quality and come with a 30-day guarantee. This means that if you are unsatisfied with any of the services, then the service provider will redo it for no extra cost. For instance, if you have opted for home renovation and need a wall repainted because it wasn’t done properly in the first attempt itself, the professionals will get it done within 30 days without charging anything extra for the service. Additionally, you can get the services within your budget and the preferred day, date and time.
Gurmeet Singh Bindra says, “The key challenges that consumers face today is poor communication from service providers and blatant lack of reliability in terms of project completion or quality of service. They also face issues when the service professionals are unable to provide satisfactory services and follow a transparent approach. Our aim is to bridge the gap in an efficient and transparent manner, by providing them customized local home services.”
He adds, “We make it a point to conduct a personal one-to-one interview with the service providers. This thorough background check ensures that the customers can hire verified and trusted professionals for the required services without additional research or follow-ups.”
What does the future hold?
Still in its nascent stage, there are miles to go for ProHandz, which aims to be a successful online marketplace for local home services. The company is also considering developing an iOS version of the app for its users and planning to expand in more Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities in India.
“We define success not by scale or by dominance, but by our ability to build a brand that stands out for its value-addition to the services. We believe this is the single most aspect that defines our business model,” says Hemant Patel.