Pronto bets 10-minute house help formalizes India's informal home services

Pronto is an Indian startup betting that domestic help — a service most urban households arrange through informal word-of-mouth — can be reorganized as an on-demand product. Customers book trained, background-verified workers for chores like mopping, utensil cleaning and laundry, with dispatch in about 10 minutes in dense micromarkets, positioning it closer to quick commerce than traditional home services.

Founder Anjali Sardana launched Pronto out of stealth in May 2025 with a $2M seed at a $12.5M valuation, backed by General Catalyst, Glade Brook and Bain Capital Ventures. In 90 days revenue grew nearly 5x and an $11M Series A at $45M followed. Bookings climbed from roughly 1,000 a day in late 2025 to 18,000 by March 2026, and 26,000 by early May 2026 — a 44% jump in one month — while the professional network grew from 1,440 to 6,500 workers.

Investors kept marking the company up: $25M at $100M in March 2026, then a $20M extension from Lachy Groom (an early Zepto backer) at $200M in May, for roughly $60M raised total. Morgan Stanley estimated Pronto at 2.7M monthly active users in March, leading the category with 43% of app downloads. The constraint is now supply, not demand — 60% of new workers come from referrals, and utilization runs above 65%.

Pronto's wager is that the formalization of supply — training, verification, structured shifts and predictable income — is the durable edge in a market where Redseer sized home services at $56-57 billion in FY2025 with under 1% online penetration. Its oldest Gurugram micromarkets already show positive contribution margins; newer cities remain in investment mode.