Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely followed solo investors, has decided to back an Indian startup. Pronto Only 20 minutes before his first meeting with the 24-year-old founder.
A meeting through a mutual connection in February led to Groom investing $20 million in a follow-up Series B in Pronto, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment — a double assessment more than two months agoAs in TechCrunch previously reported. The deal came together within weeks and brought in a solo investor as the Bengaluru-based startup expanded to meet growing demand for on-demand home services in India.
Damat said he was drawn to Pronto’s ambition to build what he calls the world’s largest platform for organizing domestic labor, starting with India’s vast and largely unstructured workforce. “The business underneath it is really hard, and most of the endeavors in adjacent categories struggle with operational discipline,” he said, adding that Pronto founder Anjali Sardana (pictured above) and her team are operating “at a level I haven’t seen anywhere else in this space.”
Before founding Pronto in 2025, Sardana worked at Bain Capital and venture capital firm 8VC, where he had early exposure to investment and high-growth startups. The startup connects households with workers for daily tasks like cleaning and basic household services.
The introduction was arranged through Glade Brook Capital founder Paul Hudson, who connected Groom and Sardana during a visit to San Francisco earlier this year. Glade Brook has backed startups founded by both: Sardana-led Pronto and Physical Intelligencewhere Groom is a co-founder. Hudson and Groom have also backed an Indian fast-commerce startup Zepto.
Sardana said Groom’s investment approach is fundamentally founder-driven. “He indexes two things. One is the founder, and that’s 95% of it. If he likes the founder, then he’ll invest,” he told TechCrunch, adding that the rest depends on the scale and potential of the business.
Bey’s bet comes as startups in India race to create instant home services platforms, a category where more consumers are turning to on-demand help for everyday tasks as it gains rapid adoption among urban households.
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The opportunity is significant. A recent Bank of America note reviewed by TechCrunch estimates that the instant home services market in India could become a $15-18 billion industry by the end of the decade as companies, including Pronto, A quick bitand Urban Company’s InstaHelp Compete for share in a fast-growing category.
Competition is intensifying, especially with strong capital inflows and aggressive pricing to attract first-time users. Bank of America estimates that Snabbit and Urban Company’s InstaHelp each have about 40% of the market, while Pronto has about a 20% share even as it expands rapidly. This category is expected to remain “burn-heavy” for the next two to three years.
Despite outpacing its larger competitors, Pronto is growing rapidly, going from about 18,000 orders a day to 26,000 within a month. The startup is focused on repeat use, and they’re betting that turning occasional demand into frequent, habit-driven use will be key to winning the category, with the top 10% of users accounting for roughly 40% of orders.
This growth also brought difficulties, especially in establishing supply. Pronto expanded its network of service workers from 1,440 to 6,500 in January. But demand continues to outstrip supply, Sardana said, making forecasting and capacity management major challenges as a startup grows.
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