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Business News/ Companies / iService raises Rs3 crore in seed fund
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iService raises Rs3 crore in seed fund

Gadgets repair firm iService raised the funds from Blume Ventures and angel investors

Gadgets repair firm iService provides services for phones and laptops.Premium
Gadgets repair firm iService provides services for phones and laptops.

Gadgets repair firm iService said on Thursday that it has raised Rs3 crore in a seed funding round from Blume Ventures.

Angel investors, including Freshdesk co-founder Girish Mathrubootham, TaxiForSure co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna, chief executive of Tapzo Ankur Singla, former Flipkart executive Mekin Maheshwari and Belong co-founder Vijay Sharma, also participated in the round.

“Given the $2 billion opportunity ahead of us, we will strengthen the team and the product to be the first choice for people with an issue of repair with their gadgets. We will also build a network of existing SMBs (small and medium businesses) and newly skilled individuals in this industry get access to more work and tools to run their business," said iService’s co-founder Ankit Chowdhary in a statement.

ServiceMonk Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which owns iService, was founded in 2013 by Chowdhary. Currently a 35-member team, iService started when Chowdhary broke his second-hand iPhone 3, and resorted to fixing it on his own after he failed to find help.

The Bengaluru-based company that also operates in Delhi provides gadget repairs and services for phones and laptops. It operates through four brick-and-mortar service centres and also provides home service to customers.Claiming to be profitable, the company has technicians on payroll to provide servicing.The company claims that it has catered to around 30,000 customers so far, with an average ticket price of Rs3,000 per service. The company targets a 350% growth in revenues in the next one year.

“If the phone is in warranty then the customer goes to the phone manufacturer’s service centre. In case it is not in warranty, going to a manufacturer’s service centre can be expensive, so the customer may go to a local shop to get his phone repaired, who is not easy to trust and also where the cost is ambiguous and not standardized. We (iService) are in the middle of the two—where we bring the trust of a brand and provide affordable services," said Chowdhary in an interview to Mint.

The company competes with Hyderabad-based smartphone repair e-commerce platform JustLikeNew Technologies Pvt. Ltd founded in 2014. In September 2016, the company raised $500,000 in angel funding from investors, including executive chairman of Mindtree Ltd Krishnakumar Natarajan and former managing director of Oracle India Sandeep Mathur, among others.

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Published: 13 Jan 2017, 09:17 AM IST
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