A 20-minute pitch wins Indian startup Pronto backing from Lachy Groom - BERITAJA

Lachy Groom, 1 of Silicon Valley’s about intimately watched solo investors, decided to backmost Indian startup Pronto conscionable 20 minutes into his first gathering pinch its 24-year-old founder.

The meeting, which took spot successful February done a communal connection, led to Groom investing $20 cardinal successful Pronto arsenic an hold of its Series B round, valuing the startup astatine $200 cardinal aft the finance — double its valuation conscionable complete 2 months earlier, arsenic TechCrunch had previously reported. The woody came together wrong weeks, bringing the solo investor connected committee arsenic the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet increasing request for on-demand location services successful India.

Groom said he was drawn to Pronto’s ambition to build what he called the world’s largest level for organizing home labor, starting pinch India’s immense and mostly unstructured workforce. “The activity underneath that is genuinely hard, and about attempts successful adjacent categories person struggled pinch the operational discipline,” he said, adding that Pronto laminitis Anjali Sardana (pictured above) and her squad were operating “at a level I haven’t seen elsewhere successful this space.”

Before founding Pronto successful 2025, Sardana worked astatine Bain Capital and task patient 8VC, wherever she gained early vulnerability to investing and high-growth startups. The startup connects households pinch workers for mundane tasks specified arsenic cleaning and basal location services.

The preamble was arranged done Paul Hudson, laminitis of Glade Brook Capital, who connected Groom and Sardana during her travel to San Francisco earlier this year. Glade Brook has backed startups founded by both: Pronto, which Sardana leads, and Physical Intelligence, wherever Groom is simply a co-founder. Hudson and Groom person besides backed Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto.

Sardana said Groom’s finance attack is heavy founder-driven. “He indexes 2 things. One is the founder, and that’s 95% of it. If he loves the founder, past he will invest,” she told TechCrunch, adding that the remainder comes down to the standard and imaginable of the business.

Groom’s stake comes arsenic a clutch of startups successful India title to build instant location services platforms, a class that is seeing accelerated take among municipality households arsenic much consumers move to on-demand thief for mundane tasks.

The opportunity is significant. A caller Bank of America note, reviewed by TechCrunch, estimates the instant location services marketplace successful India could turn into a $15 cardinal to $18 cardinal manufacture by the extremity of the decade, arsenic companies including Pronto, Snabbit, and Urban Company’s InstaHelp compete for stock successful the fast-growing category.

Competition is intensifying, pinch dense superior inflows and fierce pricing, peculiarly to pull first-time users. Bank of America estimates that Snabbit and Urban Company’s InstaHelp each relationship for about 40% of the market, while Pronto has about a 20% share, moreover arsenic it scales rapidly. The class is expected to stay “burn-heavy” complete the adjacent 2 to 3 years.

Despite trailing larger rivals, Pronto has been scaling rapidly, increasing from about 18,000 bookings a time to 26,000 successful conscionable complete a month. The startup is focused connected driving repetition usage, betting that turning occasional request into frequent, habit-driven usage will beryllium cardinal to winning the category, pinch its apical 10% of users accounting for about 40% of bookings.

This maturation has besides brought challenges, peculiarly successful building retired supply. Pronto has expanded its web of work workers to 6,500, up from 1,440 successful January. But Sardana said request continues to outpace supply, making forecasting and capacity guidance cardinal challenges arsenic the startup grows.