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These apps help you settle down in a new city (Technology Feature)
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By Gazal GuptaNew Delhi, April 28
New to a city and still
trying to find your moorings? Fret not, for there's a slew of smartphone
apps that can help you settle down smoothly.
Apps like
TimesSaverz, PepperTap and Urbanclap help you seamlessly sift through
challenges such as locating an ATM, finding groceries, home fittings,
the nearest dry cleaner and the plumber et al.
You can buy fresh
fruits, vegetables and groceries while sitting at home with just a click
on PepperTap and can be connected to the right trusted service
professionals with the help of UrbanClap.
Quality home-based services - from cleaning to all sorts of repairs - can be availed of through Timessaverz.
PepperTap,
launched in November 2014, is a hyper local grocery delivery service
which provides an exhaustive list of grocery products whenever and
wherever you want.
Currently, the services are available
throughout Gurgaon with highly competitive prices along with
no-questions-asked return policy but is set to quickly expand.
"The
daily struggles of grocery shopping used to kill my family time,
especially during the weekend. I had always wished for a solution
wherein a chore like grocery shopping could be done for me," PepperTap
co-founder Navneet Singh told IANS.
Consumers can place their
orders through the mobile app for delivery within two hours, making it
one of the fastest services of its kind.
The app is available for both Android and Apple's iOS platforms.
The venture has received Series A funding of $10 million ( Rs.60 crore) from SAIF Partners and Sequoia Capital.
"The
funding will be leveraged for expanding the reach of PepperTap to 10
more cities by the end of the year," said Navneet Singh, who wants to
take PepperTap from a single-city operation to a pan-India one.
Then,
TimesSaverz, one of India's first on-demand home-based service,
delivers various services to one's doorstep - from cleaning, repairs,
handyman jobs to running errands and doing paperwork.
Debadutta
Upadhyaya, CEO & co-founder of TimeSaverz, which was founded in
April 2013, said: "It is a combination of personal experience around the
struggle for getting the right help for the right price at the right
time in the metros, more so if you are a nuclear working couple family,
without any support system."
TimeSaverz provides its services in
Mumbai, Pune, and Bengaluru. It says that each of its agents is taken on
only after thorough background checks.
It provides services at market rates or even lower.
IT
professional Asha Jain, 32, who recently shifted to Bengaluru shared
her experience with IANS: "I moved to the city with little knowledge of
the area and having no friends around made my situation worse. Then I
used TimesSaverz and ordered cleaning services and they did a fabulous
job."
UrbanClap, another start-up based in Delhi, helps users get
the best professional services in areas like interior decoration,
photography, event management and the like.
Whether you are
looking to decorate your home, get candid pictures of your wedding,
planning your child's birthday or just get healthier, UrbanClap is the
destination for all your service needs. It connects online users with
offline businesses.
"Painful memories from the past, finding a
guitar teacher, a home designer, tailor, wedding decorator, a house
broker motivated us to launch UrbanClap," Varun Khaitan, who co-founded
UrbanClap in October 2014, told IANS.
It's the simplest way to find and hire trusted professionals, claim the founders.
The
venture has raised Rs.10 crore in funding from SAIF Partners, Accel
Partners and Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.
"The
platform is already making thousands of successful connections every
week and with the backing of our investors, we plan to scale up the
platform across hundreds of services and multiple cities," UrbanClap's
Raghav Chandra told IANS.
"Our smartphone-based matchmaking
solution is very smooth and helps you find the right professionals with
no effort at all. It is as easy as a clap," he added.
So, the next time you shift to a new city, just remember all the services are at your doorstep if you subscribe to these apps!
(Gazal Gupata can be contacted at [email protected])