Providing right solution at the right time: Mr. Right

Hyperlocal industry has seen huge leaps and bounds over the past one year. With companies like Grofers, LocalOye, Swiggy etc. are trying hard to serve customers with cooked meal deliveries, grocery delivery, ordering from restaurants, handyman & home services and what not, the industry has seen a spate of new startup eyeing at the potential of the hyperlocal horizon.
In a candid conversation with Retailer Media, Prashant Chaudhary, Co-Founder, Mr. Right talks about the rising need of on-demand services and why users are giving it a thumbs-up. He also spoke about how his firm Mr. Right will try and tap the maximum of this market with an acute execution plan.

Talk to us about Mr. Right in brief?
Mr. Right is a leading on-demand home services aggregator that connects homeowners with the best-rated and verified home service professionals in their neighbourhood.
In its early days, Mr. Right operated as a service provider with a team of more than 50 home service professionals on board. The idea was an instant hit, and it became impossible to match the ever growing demand. In mid 2014, the team pivoted to a different business model: an on-demand local home services aggregator with an even larger network of service professionals. Mr. Right has the largest network of more than 2500 company verified service professionals, helping thousands of households all over Delhi and NCR on a monthly basis. Right expanded to Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru in November 2015and has over 1500in these cities.

How has been the journey so far? (Challenges/ milestones achieved etc.
Challenges: In contrast to what the e-commerce and several other hyper-local startups have been doing i.e. pouring in huge amount of discounts to acquire new customers, we’ve focused on the unit economics from day one. The major challenge, however, that face the home services industry as a whole, is to provide the right solution at the right time and being cost effective in doing so. We started operations as a service provider and brought home service professionals on board but had to change operation styles due to logistic difficulties. In order to offer services in multiple locations, we have adopted a marketplace aggregator model building a network of more than 2500 professionals in Delhi NCR and another 1500+ in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune to make the on-demand experience as fast and convenient as possible.
Milestones:Mr. Right recently expanded its footprints to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune.

If it’s not a transaction-led model wherein you will charge if the service is taken by the customer, how do you make money?
We work on a commission based model. We charge a certain (variable) percentage from our service professionals (Pros) on every job completed and payment made by the customer.

What would you attribute the spurt in investor and start up activity in the hyper local space to?
The home services industry in India is growing towards becoming a $50 Billion plus lucrative market amidst a rapidly-growing economy. And we believe hyperlocal home services is the next big thing in the Indian startup ecosystem. The increased activity in the emergence of number of startups ad investments from VCs substantiate the fact that the overall growth of the industry is escalating at a fast pace. This truly represents an evolution in consumer behavior.

Talk to us about the investment front of Mr. Right?
I, along with my co-founder Mayank Agrawal, started Mr. Right with an initial investment of Rs 50 Lacs. We are in the process of raising more capital in order to expand to new geographies, strengthen our technology and add service professionals in new cities.

How many service requests do you receive in a day? And what are most preferred categories?
We receive 250-300 cases on weekdays. The number rises on weekends as most people tend to get home repairs and other such activities taken care of during weekends. Home cleaning continues to be one of the most requested services regardless of the time of the year.

What role has technology played in the app's life so far?
We receive more than 60 percent of our cases from mobile apps (Android and iOS).Technology has been at the core of everything we do here at Mr. Right. On the customer front, we have used technology to streamline the whole case booking process by allowing them to choose their own time and place while creating a case. We automatically send our customers complete details of the job and the pro assigned via SMS, email and mobile app notifications. Customers can even reschedule, cancel or request for another Pro via Mr. Right web or mobile app. The Pro on the other hand is notified of the assigned case and every development/ changes thereon via the Mr. Right Pro app installed on his android mobile phone.
Going forward, we will soon be able to track things like the job status and Pro location in real-time, enabling us to make service delivery, availability and the entire on-demand experience even more effective for our customers.

Share with us your expansion plans?
We have plans to expand to all tier I cities across India. We’ve recently gone live in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Pune and are expecting to add one more city every 30 to 45 days. That’s the pace that we’ve picked up.

How do you connect with the service providers? 
Mr. Right contracts with agencies (both large and small) as well as individual contractors to build its supply chain of service providers. Most providers reach out to us organically and submit their details via our website, mobile app, email or social media accounts. So, inbound marketing works well for us in terms of adding new service providers. We also work through referrals and do our own research and three-step verification before on-boarding service professionals.