Helpling, one of Europe’s leading platforms for booking a vetted and insured cleaner online, announced today the extension of its business model. Customers will now be able to book additional household services such as window cleaning, furniture assembling and painting work. With this move, Helpling aims to reposition itself as the leading platform for booking household services online. The new services will first launch across 15 German cities including Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Cologne. The global launch will take place later this year, with the first country set to be the United Kingdom.
After several months of trialing and testing, customers are now able to book multiple household services, including window cleaning, furniture assembling, carpet and upholstery cleaning, clearing out and painting work. Over the course of the next few months, the choice of services will be continuously extended.
In addition to partnering with self-employed cleaners, Helpling is now working with more than 150 partner companies. Helpling stated that it is selecting such partners based on quality, reliability and price. This will save customers a time-consuming comparison, where they will now be able to book a service for a fixed price on their desired date through secure online payment. Partner companies will benefit by saving customer acquisition costs as well as handing over all matters such as invoicing and customer service.
Benedikt Franke, Co-Founder of Helpling stated: “Searching for a reliable window cleaner or painter has traditionally been an inconvenient and frustrating task. You typically have to wait weeks in order to book an appointment and the estimated costs rarely meet the final price. Our aim is to rearrange and improve another non-transparent market through technology. By the extension of our business model, Helpling is firmly positioning itself as Europe’s leading brand for household services.”
Philip Huffmann, Co-Founder of Helpling added: “The experience of bringing together 10,000 cleaners with over 100,000 households, as well as the technological maturity of the platform, offer the ideal basis for this strategic step. With the extension of the business model, Helpling creates a marketplace, which mediates various household services from a single source.”
Helpling was founded by Benedikt Franke, Philip Huffmann and Rocket Internet in January 2014. Since then the company has raised € 56.5 million from investors such as Mangrove Capital Partners, Phenomen Ventures, Point Nine Capital, Lukasz Gadowski, Lakestar and Kite Ventures. Helpling is active in 9 countries in 3 continents: Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, UAE and UK. In 2015 we mentioned Helpling as one of “5 German startups to look out for in 2015“.