Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched individual investors, has decided to back an Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes after first meeting its 24-year-old founder.
The meeting, which took place in February through a mutual connection, led Groom to invest $20 million in Pronto as a follow-up to its Series B round, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment, double its amount. valuation a little over two months earlieras TechCrunch did previously reported. The deal closed within weeks, onboarding the solo investor as the Bangalore-based startup expands to meet the growing demand for on-demand home services in India.
Groom said he was attracted to Pronto’s ambition to build what he calls the world’s largest platform for organizing domestic work, starting with India’s vast and largely unorganized workforce. “The work underneath is really hard, and most attempts in adjacent categories have struggled with operational discipline,” he said, adding that Pronto founder Anjali Sardana (pictured above) and her team were operating “at a level I haven’t seen elsewhere in this space.”
Before founding Pronto in 2025, Sardana worked at Bain Capital and venture capital firm 8VC, where she gained early exposure to investing and high-growth startups. The startup connects households with workers for daily tasks such as cleaning and basic home services.
The introduction was hosted by Paul Hudson, founder of Glade Brook Capital, who connected Groom and Sardana during his trip to San Francisco earlier this year. Glade Brook has backed startups founded by both Sardana-led Pronto and Physical Intelligenceof which Groom is a co-founder. Hudson and Groom also backed an Indian fast commerce startup Zepto.
Sardana said Groom’s investment approach is heavily focused on founders. “It indexes two things. One is the founder, and that’s 95%. If he likes the founder, then he will invest,” she told TechCrunch, adding that the rest depends on the scale and potential of the company.
Groom’s bet comes as a group of startups in India race to create instant service platforms for the home, a category seeing rapid adoption among urban households as more consumers turn to on-demand help with everyday tasks.
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The opportunity is significant. A recent Bank of America note, reviewed by TechCrunch, estimates that India’s instant home services market could become a $15 billion to $18 billion industry by the end of the decade, as companies like Pronto, A little fastAnd Urban Company InstaHelp are competing for share in this fast-growing category.
Competition is intensifying, with large capital inflows and aggressive pricing, particularly to attract new users. Bank of America estimates that Snabbit and Urban Company’s InstaHelp each account for about 40% of the market, while Pronto has about 20% share, although it is growing quickly. This category is expected to remain “high intensity” over the next two to three years.
Although it lags behind its larger competitors, Pronto has grown rapidly, going from around 18,000 bookings per day to 26,000 in just over a month. The startup is focused on driving repeat use, betting that turning occasional demand into frequent, habit-driven use will be key to winning the category, with its top 10% of users accounting for about 40% of bookings.
This growth has also generated challenges, particularly in terms of strengthening supply. Pronto expanded its network of service workers to 6,500 people, up from 1,440 in January. But Sardana said demand continues to outstrip supply, making forecasting and capacity management key challenges as the startup grows.
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Jagmeet covers startups, technology policy updates and all other major technology developments in India for TechCrunch. He previously worked as a senior correspondent at NDTV.
You can contact or check Jagmeet’s outreach by sending an email mail@journalistjagmeet.com.
