Working families of the urban households try to balance multiple tasks simultaneously, and that too, day-in and day-out. But professional pressure, children’s educational demands, elderly healthcare demands, and domestic household demands make it an impossible task.
That is why they hire domestic help, caregivers, cooks, drivers, baby care maids, etc. Most of the time, it solves most of their issues and makes their lives less hectic and minds more peaceful. But often, these people’s unprofessional behaviour, eccentricities, and unknown backgrounds make these peace-seeking urban families’ lives too complicated and uncomfortable.
And during the pandemic times, these urban families understood the importance of such domestic assistance anew. And found some of these helpers and caregivers taking undue advantage of the situation, and many of them started demanding more of everything except work. It was the situation until MyChores introduced its services and assistance for such families.
MyChores is one of the first of its kind of unique digital portals, which provides an online assisted search service built to help you and your family find any category of domestic helper in a real quick time.
MyChores was founded in 2019 by industry professionals, including Andrew V, the Founder and CEO, with a combined experience of over 50 years.
“We have successfully helped over 5000 families find care workers for their homes in the last 3.5 years of operations,” Andrew shared, “Our mission is to make finding the right help an easy task and fast process for millions of households across the country, resulting in happiness and delight for households.”
Andrew has an overall 28 years of experience. Most of his stint was in the sales and marketing department of financial services companies. His last job was with TATA Capital as Head of Wealth Management Business Mumbai.
Andrew added, “Our team of placement experts use their knowledge and experience to search, screen and shortlist only the best candidates for you.”
With its online professional service platform for connecting urban families with over one lakh of the best professional domestic helps, caregivers, and home assistance providers, thoroughly cross-checked with background verifications and at very economical costs, MyChores is making a very welcoming, positive social difference.
Andrews said, “In time, our processes have been refined by incorporating the learning’s from our customer experiences and are definitely bound to delight you every time you come to us for our services.”
Andrew was speaking with Insights Success for its edition of ‘The Fastest Growing Startups in Maharashtra,’ where he shared his and MyChores’ journey, evolution, and its future in this emerging industry, and how his unique firm is fast becoming a go-to choice of every domestic assistance seeking family.
Below are the excerpts of the exclusive interview.
Please brief us about MyChores.
We are a web-based online marketplace that helps households connect with and hire domestic help and caregivers. We have services priced to suit every pocket size and cater to the middle class and the affluent mass segments.
We also have customised offerings for the very affluent UHNI families. We have served over 3000 customers and have deployed over 5000 domestic helps in Mumbai, Thane, and Navi Mumbai region.
What were the initial challenges that you faced while commencing your start-up?
Initial challenges were –
Building supply as the overwhelming majority of the workers are women. They are semi-literate and have no access/limited to any kind of mass media/social media, making it very difficult to reach them and build our supply.
The supply building activity was slow and consumed a lot of capital. Being an informal sector, there are no rules for engagement.
What would be your advice to the budding entrepreneurs who are willing to start their own venture/business?
- Do your research well about market and market fitment and whether people will pay for these services before you jump in.
- Plan finances. Do not let your idea be dependent solely on investor money.
- Give it time. Any new business takes time to mature. Be there for the long haul.
- Have a sound support system to fall back on during the crisis.
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on how the involvement of emerging technologies enhances the industry and what advancements can we expect in the future?
Every new technology development comes with an opportunity to make human lives better and easier. E.g., Speech to text is a great technological development, especially for people who only know one or two Indian vernacular languages.
Such developments make it easier for them to communicate with prospective employers/clients enhancing their opportunities and lives.
Where do you envision your company eventually, and how do you plan to embrace the changes happening in your industry?
In years to come, we see ourselves as the leader in ‘home care services’ at a Pan India level. We have been pioneering changes in the segment, bringing fairness and parity, especially for domestic help when negotiating with prospective employers/clients.
We have used technology in a manner where both sides of the marketplace, namely households and domestic helps, can use it to better their overall experience.
