HouseJoy goes joy-less, Founders to exit Startup

By Shariq Hussain

Posted on May 13, 2017

Bangalore-based home services startup Housejoy is brewing trouble within the house. According to a source, co-founders Arjun Kumar and Sunil Goel have allegedly quit the company in the wake of a Board-Executed decision.

Sarvaloka Services On Call Pvt. Ltd which operates Housejoy was founded in 2014 by Arjun Kumar and Sunil Goel. Housejoy is a web platform that allows homeowners to browse and book quality service providers. The total equity funding of startup is about $27 Million. Matrix Ventures, Amazon, Qualcomm Ventures, Ru-Net and Vertex Ventures are the investors of Housejoy.

As per the report by MoneyControl The board allegedly forced the founders Kumar and Goel to quit in November 2016 to create a single point of decision-making in the hands of professional CEO Saran Chatterjee.

The report also stated that, a spokesperson’s statement from Housejoy: “The decision was taken by the Board and the company keeping the best interests of the company in mind. The founders and the board hired a professional team, which is the CEO and the leadership team to take the company to the next level, post-Series B funding.”

HouseJoy has also shut down operations in 7 cities out of the 12 cities which are smaller cities such as Baroda, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune and Surat. Their operations and reduced its workforce by 50%. The startup is now operational in cities like Bengaluru, Delhi and NCR, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai.

The startup board has decided that the startup will now be headed by its CEO Saran Chatterjee. He was appointed as CEO in the year 2015. Before joining Housejoy, he was vice president of product management at Flipkart and a key part of the e-commerce company’s leadership team for three years.

Similarly, startup like Scootsy have raised funding, Genie has shut their operations.

The company claims to service over 4,000 orders a day and competes with bigger rival UrbanClap in the home services space. The company offers doorstep services such as plumbing, carpentry, salon, beauty, electrical repairs and within a year of operation, the company had expanded its operations to 12 cities. Read more about Indian Startup Ecosystem.

HouseJoy goes joy-less, Founders to exit Startup