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Business News/ Companies / Start-ups/  Quikr launches home beauty services called AtHomeDiva
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Quikr launches home beauty services called AtHomeDiva

Quikr has rebranded Salosa as AtHomeDiva and expanded operations from Delhi and Gurgaon to Bengaluru

The number of beauty service requests received on Quikr has been growing 100% every month. Photo: AFPPremium
The number of beauty service requests received on Quikr has been growing 100% every month. Photo: AFP

Bengaluru: Online classifieds company Quikr India Pvt. Ltd on Wednesday launched AtHomeDiva, a home beauty service. The move comes two months after the company bought Gurgaon-based home beauty services provider Salosa for an undisclosed amount.

The Tiger Global Management-backed company, which was valued at close to $1 billion when it last raised funds in April 2015, had acquired Salosa to penetrate deeper into the home services market. Quikr has essentially rebranded Salosa as AtHomeDiva and expanded operations from Delhi and Gurgaon to Bengaluru.

“AtHomeDiva is a QuikrServices business that has scaled fast on both demand and supply side in virtually no time with practically zero marketing," Pranay Chulet, founder and chief executive of Quikr, said in a statement.

“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 added.

The number of beauty service requests received on Quikr has been growing 100% every month, said P.D. Sundar, head of QuikrServices. In the home beauty segment, Quikr competes with the likes of StayGlad, BigStylist, Belita and The Home Salon, among others. Quikr had earlier committed an investment of 250 crore to strengthen its home services vertical.

Quikr is growing beyond a listing platform to a one-stop shop for used goods by enabling payments on its platform, as well as facilitating logistics, a move likely to throw open additional revenue channels at a time when a slowdown in external funding is prompting start-ups to reduce cash burn and focus on profitability.

Quikr is focusing on five key business segments—automobiles, real estate, jobs, services and customer-to-customer sales—it has identified as new sources of revenue and fend off competition from other venture capital-backed businesses that have emerged in each of these categories.

As a classifieds portal, Quikr has just one rival: OLX, which is backed by Naspers Ltd, a South African mass media company. However, each of the verticals the company plans to focus on has seen the emergence of a number of well-funded start-ups.

In the automobile segment, Quikr competes with the likes of CarDekho and CarTrade, while the real estate segment has businesses such as Housing, Magicbricks and PropTiger, among others. Similarly, the hyperlocal services segment has deep-pocketed start-ups such as Housejoy and UrbanClap, while in the jobs category, the likes of Babajob and AasaanJobs compete with Quikr.

The company has so far raised $346 million from investors such as Tiger Global Management, Warburg Pincus and Norwest Venture Partners, among others.

Quikr has been investing aggressively to build these verticals by both acquiring companies and making strategic investments, especially in the real estate segment. For instance, it acquired real estate portal Commonfloor (maxHeap Technologies Pvt. Ltd) for $120 million in January.

This apart, it has acquired Indian Realty Exchange (123 Startup Ventures Pvt. Ltd), a real estate agent aggregator, and RealtyCompass, a real estate analytics start-up, besides making a strategic investment in A.N. Virtual World Tech Ltd, a company which provides 360-degree street views.

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Published: 13 Jul 2016, 06:11 PM IST
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