Avin Rabheru: Housekeep

Avin Rabheru, 33
Company: Housekeep
Web: www.housekeep.com

Three-time Startups 100-featured and a finalist in the Startups Awards’ Service Business of the Year and Venture Funded Business of the Year categories, Housekeep should be a name familiar to Startups’ readers.

Founded in 2014 by former venture capitalist Avin Rabheru, Housekeep is the company in the process of digitally disrupting the UK’s £4bn home cleaning market. Its real-time scheduling and communication system allows customers to book, edit, reschedule and pay for cleaners online, with updates automatically syncing to the cleaner’s mobile app. But it’s not just homeowners who benefit from the business model; Housekeep says it is “obsessed with helping both sides of the market”, enabling its cleaners to manage their working life through the bespoke app with router technology that increases their hours and reduces travel costs – so far, it claims this has saved £260,000.

Housekeep has seen extraordinary growth since launch, from a “handful of customers and two cleaners” to more than 10,000 customer accounts and over 1,000 cleaners. With a huge potential customer base of 600,000 25-44 year old time-poor Londoners – 2.5 million across the UK – and already expanding its remit to include commercial cleaning, the start-up estimates it could be on the verge of making a serious mark in a UK market worth £10bn.