UrbanYou, an on-demand marketplace for services such as cleaning and gardening, today announced the strategic acquisition of Homehello, an on-demand marketplace offering domestic cleaning, co-founded by Richard Lin and Jason Pham in 2014. The acquisition will cement UrbanYou’s place as the dominant Australian marketplace for on-demand home services.
Co-founded by ex-Yahoo executives Elke Keeley and Noga Edelstein, UrbanYou instantly connects busy people with trusted, verified cleaning and gardening professionals. The strategic acquisition will see HomeHello fully integrated and operating within the UrbanYou business, which Noga Edelstein believes is great news for customers and service professionals alike.
“When we looked at their business, there were obvious synergies that would enable us to quickly scale up across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane”, said Edelstein. “Marketplaces are typically a ‘winner takes-all’ and this acquisition enables us to step-up and cement our position as the biggest marketplace for household maintenance services, in a market worth $15 billion.”
“Homehello have successfully built a strong and loyal recurring business, and welcoming these users to UrbanYou, instantly doubles this sector of our business. And when combining our networks, UrbanYou boasts the largest network of top-quality service professionals available on-demand,” explained Edelstein. “Existing HomeHello customers will also benefit from our superior customer service experience, new technologies, and additional service offerings such as gardening, exit cleaning, and carpet-cleaning, so it really is a win-win,” added Edelstein.
Commenting on behalf of HomeHello, co-founder Richard Lin continues, “We’re incredibly proud of everything the HomeHello team has built and achieved over the past three years and we are extremely confident in UrbanYou’s ability to continue our mission of providing quality home services to all Australians.”
The announcement comes after a year of phenomenal growth for UrbanYou. In July, the company closed a Series A raise in under two weeks, by existing investor Microequities Venture Capital and a strategic angel investor. This fueled the expansion into Melbourne, and provided scope to explore consolidation opportunities. Currently operating in Sydney and Melbourne, UrbanYou has serviced over 30,000 bookings and generated over $4M in sales through the platform. The business is on track to triple growth within 12-months, and this projection will only be heightened with the addition of Homehello.
Continuing the momentum, UrbanYou today commenced the rollout of enhanced features for their real-time booking platform. These advancements include the launch of two new mobile apps, and self-managed portals for both service providers and customers respectively. The new tech touchpoints will further automate user booking and payments, and integrate UrbanYou into the business operations of their service provider network.
Edelstein believes the new technology will extend the company’s commitment to providing the best experience on both sides of the marketplace.
At UrbanYou we’ve spent the past year building our quality network of providers, enhancing our user experience with innovative technology, and establishing partnerships in high growth markets.
We are very proud of our ability to build depth in market and user loyalty, and implementing our rollup strategy to gain instant liquidity, we’re continuing our mission to help busy people manage their everyday household services, quickly and conveniently,” added Edelstein.