Quikr Relaunches Newly Acquired Home Beauty Service
In a move which reflects its growth beyond listings, Indian online classifieds company Quikr has rebranded its home beauty business Salosa to AtHomeDiva and expanded its operations from Delhi and Gurgaon to Bengaluru.
In a move which reflects its growth beyond listings, Indian online classifieds company Quikr has rebranded its home beauty business Salosa to AtHomeDiva and expanded its operations from Delhi and Gurgaon to Bengaluru.
According to the head of QuikrServices PD Sundar, the number of beauty service requests received on Quikr has been growing 100 per cent every month.
Quikr founder and chief executive Pranay Chulet says the AtHomeDiva business has scaled fast on both demand and supply sides in "virtually no time with practically zero marketing".
“On the demand side, the business had access to a large base of women users from not just QuikrServices, but also QuikrGoods and QuikrHomes, and on the supply side, we were able to on-board a large number of beauty experts from QuikrJobs,” Chulet says.
Quikr, which focuses on five key business segments—real estate, automobiles, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales, says it is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for goods and services.
The company enables payments online as well as facilitating logistics, also services identified as new sources of revenue to help fend off competition from other venture capital-backed businesses emerging in each of these categories.
A Livemint.com report points out Quickr has been aggressively acquiring companies and making strategic investments to build its verticals, especially in the real estate segment. For instance, it acquired real estate portal Commonfloor (maxHeap Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for $120 million in January.
Quickr also acquired Indian Realty Exchange (123 Startup Ventures Pvt. Ltd), a real estate agent aggregator and RealtyCompass, a real estate analytics start-up and made a strategic investment in AN Virtual World Tech Ltd, a company which provides 360-degree street views.
The Livemint report argues OLX, a South African mass media company backed by Naspers Ltd is Quikr's only classifieds competitor, however, writer Sayan Chakraborty observes each of the verticals the company plans to focus on has seen the emergence of a number of well-funded start-ups.
In the real estate segment Quickr's rivals include Housing, Magicbricks and PropTiger, among others. Similarly, Quikr competes with CarDekho and CarTrade in the automobile segment.
In the jobs category, the likes of Babajob and Aasaan Jobs may give the Tiger Global Management-backed company a run for its money.
The Livemint report says Quikr has committed Rs.250 crore to strengthen its home services vertical, in a hyperlocal segment with deep-pocketed start-up competitors such as Housejoy and UrbanClap.
The re-launch of Salosa comes two months after Quickr acquired the Gurgaon-based home beauty services provider for an undisclosed amount as a strategy to penetrate deeper into the home services market.
In the home beauty segment, Quikr faces competition from the likes of StayGlad, BigStylist, Belita and The Home Salon, among others.
At the time it last raised funds in April 2015 Quickr was valued at close to $1 billion.
The company has so far raised $346 million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus and Norwest Venture Partners, among others.
