DUBAI 18 September 2018: ServiceMarket.com, one of the largest online home services marketplace in the UAE, announced the successful close of a $4 million funding round by AddVenture and Emaar Industries & Investments.
This is the company’s fourth funding round following their seed and angel rounds in 2013 and 2015 respectively, as well as their $3 million Series A round secured in 2016, bringing the total amount invested in the company since inception to $8m.
Emaar Industries & Investments (EII) joined the existing investor AddVenture, an international venture capital fund, in this latest round.
Founded in 2013, ServiceMarket is an online marketplace that allows users to find and book a home service online.
Utilizing the earlier investments, ServiceMarket has grown multiple-fold in just a few years by launching a variety of new services, partnering with hundreds of service providers, and developing proprietary technology. In the last year alone, ServiceMarket has helped over 150,000 customers book a home service online, generating more than $30m in sales revenue.
Founder Bana Shomali said the platform allows UAE residents to book over 35 different home services online.
“This investment will allow us to offer an even wider range of services to our customers, further establishing ServiceMarket as a one-stop home services platform. We will also be investing in our customer experience to ensure we retain our competitive edge in that area. We will also continue to build out our technology platform not only because it underpins the strength of our business, but also because it has revolutionized the way customers can now book services online.”
The size of the home services market in the GCC is estimated at around $20-30bn annually, and less than 1% of these services are found and booked online. Compare that to travel, hotels, flights and entertainment where 50-80% of these services are bought online in developed markets.
“ServiceMarket’s ambition is to deliver home services online to consumers in the region. Our platform does so by making the pricing and the quality of these services much more transparent to consumers, through our quote comparison and user-rating engine,” said Bana Shomali.