Home Jiny, a one-stop app for all your household services and grocery needs

The app currently services 7,000 orders a month. Its aim is to service the same number of orders per day by June 2020, and to capture 20% of the wallet share in targeted societies in 18 months

The name, essentially a play on the word 'Genie' of 'Aladdin and The Magic Lamp' fame, says it all. On observing several unorganised service providers catering to a family's daily needs, four entreprenuers found there were far too many lacunae in their delivery mechanism. So they decided to do something about it, and started an app that they called Home Jiny, which would serve as a one-stop shop to meet all the requirements of the typical Indian household.  

Founded in March 2019, Home Jiny was commercially launched in September 2019 to bring some structure into the highly unorganised grocery and home services business, The idea was to offer a slew of products and services to households under one roof. The challenge was also to standardise the quality of the products and services from across vendors.   

Home Jiny's USP is to give the customer the freedom to get everything on a single app, instead of juggling between multiple vendors, shops, service providers and apps. 

With this central idea in mind, Kuldeep Pandit, founder and chief executive officer, Navita Srinet, co-founder and CHRO and chief procurement officer, Arvind Raina, co-founder and chief services officer and Sanjeev Kumar Bidhuri, co-founder and chief warehouse officer came together. 

“On an average, it takes 45 work days in a year to procure daily food items such as milk, bread, fruits, vegetables, non-vegetarian food and FMCG products, as well as services such as maids, drivers, cooks and laundry. We realised that there is an unmet need of having a one-stop solution for all household products and services,” said Pandit.  

Biting into the services and grocery pie

According to Bidhuri, the grocery market in India around $500 billion and the services market is estimated to be worth $700 billion. Home Jiny has already started services in select areas of Faridabad, Delhi and Gurgaon. It will next start its operations in Noida in early 2020. “The idea is to be fully operational in Delhi NCR in the next six months to 12 months. Home Jiny plans to scale up from around 10,000 households at present to around 100,000 by the next quarter. The brand seeks to cater to 80 per cent of the Delhi-NCR region by December 2020,” said Bidhuri.

Since its debut in September, the app has managed a current run rate of close to 7,000 orders a month. The aim is to service the same number of orders per day by the end of June 2020, and to capture 20 per cent of the wallet share in the targeted societies in 18 months.

Bringing in tech into an unorganised world

According to Raina, the business model involves making virtually everything that a household needs available at the click of a button on a single app, thereby providing convenience and reliability to build long term trust with our customer base. To ensure quality, while the products are procured from best vendors through rigorous buying and quality processes, the services are delivered by authorized, certified and trained service partners across the spectrum. 

The focus at present is on targeting housing societies and building density and penetration. In a manpower-heavy business, thank to technology they are keeping things light. At present they have 20 direct employees and close to 100 indirect partners.

“We have three different supply-chain models. For perishables such as bread, milk, vegetables and fruits, we follow an end-to-end supply chain. This implies that we visit the source of manufacture, buy the products, grade them and store them inside, keep them in fresh bags, after which we deliver the product to the customers,” said Raina.

For FMCG products, they follow a hyper-local model, wherein they pick products from select hyper marts. They have multiple tie-ups with hyper marts and procure products on a just-in-time basis so that they can supply to customers on demand. 

For all services, they have a vendor-based model. To ensure the quality of vendors, they have a process of initial screening based on certain specific criteria, followed by further shortlisting by an in-house services team. Out of the shortlisted vendors, they then train a select few and finally enrol only the highest rated ones on the vendor app. These vendors are trained and certified by Home Jiny.

“We make this business less manpower-intensive by focusing more on depth in a society (percentage wallet share) than width (horizontal scale). This reduces manpower intensity and helps us improve service per order. Secondly given our services model, we leverage the best vendors available. This helps us get the best vendors to the best customers and vice versa,” said Srinet. 

Not a clone

The company vehemently claims to be different from all the grocery and services apps available in the market. “We are unique as we provide a portfolio width that is unmatched anywhere in the world, with 1,000-plus products and more than 200 services on one platform. So the breadth of our portfolio for homes and the depth we are creating in societies are the most significant differentiators. Building ecosystems in close collaboration with RWAs (resident welfare associations) is an integral part of the strategy,” added Pandit. The company plans to scale up from around 10,000 households at present to around 100,000 by the next quarter.  

The company is doubling its orders every month. At present it services almost 7,000 orders a month from 10 societies. It is adding five societies in Golf course road, Gurgaon, this week, and also has plans to move from three cities to eight going forward. However, the entire focus would be about carefully selecting societies and build the ecosystems around the same. 

Raising funds

Home Jiny raised about Rs 2.5 crore from 12 investors from diverse fields such as packaging, warehouse design, information technology infrastructure and software development. The co-founders also put in their own capital. The other investors include Mukul Sareen from Rustx, Kunal Pandya from NCrypted, and Vineel Nalla from 50K ventures. The company is looking to raise funding of close to Rs 10 crore by March 2020. It will be using the funds to expand operations, build talent pipeline and invest in technology.