Despite the introduction of Digital India and a wide scale awareness about ecommerce, the traditional services industry is still unorganized, and mainly offline in India. In case a housewife in Bhopal needs a carpenter to fix her old cupboard, she will either ask her husband to call a carpenter or venture out in the market, or seek help manually.
Quikr is all set to change this, with their offering: QuikrServices. Aimed at tapping this huge, unorganized market of traditional services, QuikrServices will connect the offline with online.
Empowered with a huge pool of verified local businesses which offer offline local home-services, QuikrServices will help their users to find technicians, carpenters, electricians, pest controllers, home cleaners, plumbers, mechanics and other such experts within a specific area of a city.
Users can either call back these service providers using their app or arrange an instant call back.
Additionally, users can also use QuikrConnect feature to contact Quikr’s customer care executives, explain their need and allow them to select the best service provider based on their needs.
P. D. Sundar, Head of QuikrServices, said, ” We want to provide our consumers all services under one roof without having to compromise on the authenticity of the service”. Earlier this year, Quikr had roped-in Sunder to head their new vertical; he was earlier managing Product Development and Ad Sales for Hindu Group and earlier to that, he was associated with Suleka.
Quikr Going Hyperlocal?
Earlier this month, when Quikr invested an undisclosed amount in WoNoBo, then speculations were made that Quikr may venture into hyperlocal domain. WoNoBo is a hyper-local search engine, which provides 360 degrees street view.
QuikrServices, which will provide location based search results of local service providers is expected to heavily use WoNoBo’s hyperlocal search capabilities. This may mean that Quikr will further venture into local services and products, thereby leveraging their massive database of classified ads and business information.
Earlier, Quikr had launched QuikrHomes for tapping real estate market (which already uses WoNoBo’s hyperlocal search features); QuikrCars for exclusive automobile searches and QuikrJobsfor a dedicated job search portal. They have already opened up their API with the launch of QuikrDvlpr, which can help other developers to build apps on their platform.
After raising $150 million in this April, Quikr has achieved the ‘Unicorn’ status with total valuation of $1 billion. In case they are seriously venturing into the hyper-local space, then there can be several new niches where Quikr can venture into, which include food delivery, groceries, taxis, travel and more.
We will be surely keeping a watch over Quikr’s next move now!
