Joe Hukum, an app-based provider of concierge services, has raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding from TracxnLabs, Citrus Payments’ Jitendra Gupta and 1mg.com’s Prashant Tandon.
The startup will use the money raised to scale up operations and expand into newer geographies, it said in a press statement.
Joe Hukum was launched in July by former Healthkart employees Arihant Jain, Ajeet Kushwaha and Rahul Agarwal. It is a chat-based platform for order taking and fulfilment. Users can use the app for local shopping, pick and drop, movie/ event tickets, travel, restaurant reservations, bill payments and groceries besides other services. Joe Hukum is available on both iOS and Android platforms. The service can also be accessed through SMS.
It charges a convenience fee of five percent (of order value) on every transaction. The company has its own fleet of logistics personnel for delivering products. Currently, its services are fully operational in Delhi NCR and partially available in Bangalore. By March, Joe Hukum (run by GogetSpeedy Technologies Pvt Ltd) would also expand into Mumbai, Agarwal said.
Chat-based concierge platforms have attracted considerable investor attention this year. Lookup, GoodBox and Goodservice had raised funds early this year. Lookup raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla’s personal fund, Khosla Impact with participation from Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder). Goodbox secured $2.5 million (Rs 16.5 crore) in Series A funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Goodservice received $1.6 million (Rs 10 crore) in seed funding from Sequoia Capital in June.
Haptik, Yellow Messenger, OK Sir and Helpchat are the other major players in this space.
On-demand delivery service app MagicTiger acquired Instano, a chat-based e-commerce application that offers on-demand delivery of services, for an undisclosed amount last week.
Helpchat, which recently pivoted into a chat-based personal assistant app, had acquired Mumbai-based deals and discovery platform Niffler for an undisclosed amount in September.