Cleaning solutions, it seems, is the new messaging – in today’s digital world, we’re apparently all so busy that vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing and tidying fall by the wayside. Hence the emergence in recent months of platforms like CleanAgents (formerly CleanBerlin) and Rocket Internet’s Helpling.
Another major German player, Book A Tiger (BAT), has now thrown its hat into the ring, securing a seven-figure seed round from a number of investors led by DN Capital. Nenad Marovac, managing partner at DN, joins BAT’s co-founders Claude Ritter and Nikita Fahrenholz – who also helped found Lieferheld – on the company’s board.
Berlin-based Book A Tiger allows users to find and book a trusted cleaner online when they need one – the company claims it takes just 60 seconds to secure a cleaner who has gone through a three-stage recruitment process. That, it says, leads to high quality standards for users and a cost-effective direct placement system.
Its service is currently available in Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfurt.
Fahrenholz, CEO of Book A Tiger, welcomed DN Capital as a new investor, and said: “This confirms our belief that there is great potential in the placement of professional cleaners.” He added that the company would use the fresh capital to expand its offerings and would look to establish the compay as the leading German platform by the end of the year.
That may well prove a challenge, with CleanAgents – which emerged out of a hackathon in Berlin last year – having rapidly expanded its coverage. Users in 13 German cities as well as in Vienna, Brussels, Warsw, Krakow and Wraclaw can now find cleaners using the platform.
Dubbed the ‘MyTaxi for cleaners’, CleanAgents was launched in March 2013 as CleanBerlin. A more recent entry into the market is Helpling, which launched in April in Germany. Upon widening its reach in June to France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Austria, Helpling co-founder Benedikt Franke hinted at the enormous potential the cleaning space holds: “The cleaning sector here has a huge potential; it is a stable and growing market. Together, the five countries [covered by Helpling] create an annual turnover of more than €32 billion.”