Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched solo investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes into his first meeting with its 24-year-old founder.
The meeting, which took place in February through a mutual connection, led to Groom investing $20 million in Pronto as an extension of its Series B round, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment — double its valuation just over two months earlier, as TechCrunch had previously reported. The deal came together within weeks, bringing the solo investor on board as the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet growing demand for on-demand home services in India.
Groom said he was drawn to Pronto’s ambition to build what he called the world’s largest platform for organizing domestic labor, starting with India’s vast and largely unstructured workforce. “The work underneath that is genuinely hard, and most attempts in adjacent categories have struggled with the 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 firm 8VC, where she gained early exposure to investing and high-growth startups. The startup connects households with workers for everyday tasks such as cleaning and basic home services.
The introduction was arranged through Paul Hudson, founder of Glade Brook Capital, who connected Groom and Sardana during her trip to San Francisco earlier this year. Glade Brook has backed startups founded by both: Pronto, which Sardana leads, and Physical Intelligence, where Groom is a co-founder. Hudson and Groom have also backed Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto.
Sardana said Groom’s investment approach is heavily founder-driven. “He indexes two things. One is the founder, and that’s 95% of it. If he loves the founder, then he will invest,” she told TechCrunch, adding that the rest comes down to the scale and potential of the business.
Groom’s bet comes as a clutch of startups in India race to build instant home services platforms, a category that is seeing rapid adoption among urban households as more consumers turn to on-demand help for everyday tasks.
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The opportunity is significant. A recent Bank of America note, reviewed by TechCrunch, estimates the instant home services market in India could grow into a $15 billion to $18 billion industry by the end of the decade, as companies including Pronto, Snabbit, and Urban Company’s InstaHelp compete for share in the fast-growing category.
Competition is intensifying, with heavy capital inflows and aggressive pricing, particularly to attract first-time users. Bank of America estimates that Snabbit and Urban Company’s InstaHelp each account for about 40% of the market, while Pronto has around a 20% share, even as it scales rapidly. The category is expected to remain “burn-heavy” over the next two to three years.
Despite trailing larger rivals, Pronto has been scaling rapidly, growing from around 18,000 bookings a day to 26,000 in just over a month. The startup is focused on driving repeat usage, betting that turning occasional demand into frequent, habit-driven usage will be key to winning the category, with its top 10% of users accounting for about 40% of bookings.
This growth has also brought challenges, particularly in building out supply. Pronto has expanded its network of service workers to 6,500, up from 1,440 in January. But Sardana said demand continues to outpace supply, making forecasting and capacity management key challenges as the startup grows.
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