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

Lachy Groom, 1 of Silicon Valley’s astir intimately watched solo investors, decided to backmost Indian startup Pronto conscionable 20 minutes into his archetypal gathering with 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 concern — treble its valuation conscionable implicit 2 months earlier, arsenic TechCrunch had previously reported. The woody came unneurotic wrong weeks, bringing the solo capitalist connected committee arsenic the Bengaluru-based startup expands to conscionable increasing request for on-demand location services successful India.

Groom said helium was drawn to Pronto’s ambition to physique what helium called the world’s largest level for organizing home labor, starting with India’s immense and mostly unstructured workforce. “The enactment underneath that is genuinely hard, and astir attempts successful adjacent categories person struggled with the operational discipline,” helium 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 steadfast 8VC, wherever she gained aboriginal vulnerability to investing and high-growth startups. The startup connects households with workers for mundane tasks specified arsenic cleaning and basal location services.

The instauration 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 concern attack is heavy founder-driven. “He indexes 2 things. One is the founder, and that’s 95% of it. If helium loves the founder, past helium volition 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 contention to physique instant location services platforms, a class that is seeing accelerated adoption among municipality households arsenic much consumers crook to on-demand assistance for mundane tasks.

The accidental 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 vie for stock successful the fast-growing category.

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

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

This maturation has besides brought challenges, peculiarly successful gathering 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 capableness absorption cardinal challenges arsenic the startup grows.