Urban India has embraced the era of instant everything, from groceries to gadgets. Now, a new player wants to bring that same immediacy to daily chores. Meet Pronto, a rising startup that offers on-demand home services like cleaning, laundry, and cooking prep, with the promise of delivery just 10-minute home services
Coming out of stealth with a $2 million seed round led by Bain Capital Ventures, Pronto is quickly catching attention for how it blends speed, social impact, and scale. The company is currently valued at $12.5 million and already claims over 1,000 users in Gurugram, where it piloted the service.
Unlike most gig-economy platforms, Pronto isn’t just focused on customer convenience—it’s also rethinking how gig workers are treated.
Redefining the Instant Service Model with Worker Dignity
Founded by Anjali Sardana, Pronto was born from a simple insight: people want immediate access to trusted household help, but the workers powering these services often operate under poor, exploitative conditions.
“In most platforms, workers are treated like cogs in a machine,” Sardana said. “We designed Pronto as a ‘win-win-win’—for the customers, the workers, and the business.”
The startup offers services across three models: instant (10 minutes), scheduled, and recurring, available 24/7 in supported zones. Each of its Gurugram-based hubs serves customers within a 2-mile radius, with most orders coming from just 500 meters away. This hyperlocal approach is what enables lightning-fast response times.
But beyond tech and logistics, Pronto is winning attention for its human-first approach to labor. Instead of following the typical commission-based gig model, Pronto pays workers per shift, currently every two weeks, with plans to allow flexible, even on-demand payouts. Workers are trained in-house, and all go through police checks, ID verification, and court record reviews before joining the platform.
According to Sardana, Pronto workers earn around ₹22,000–₹26,000 per month ($258–$304)—more than double the typical domestic worker wage in Delhi-NCR. The platform also acts as an informal agency, offering support to workers facing abuse or wage theft, a long-standing problem in India’s informal domestic labor market.
Pronto is already planning to introduce health insurance and is developing fintech-style products tailored to domestic workers’ needs—like savings tools and short-term credit access.
Growth Plans and Social Backlash
Pronto’s launch comes just months after a PR fiasco hit Urban Company, another major home services platform, for promoting its own rapid service, “Insta Maids.” The campaign drew widespread criticism for its tone and sparked debate about how gig workers are portrayed and compensated.
Sardana says Pronto’s approach is built to avoid such pitfalls. “We sit in the same hubs as our workers, eat lunch together, train together. Empathy is our edge,” she said.
Currently operating two hubs with 150+ workers, the startup aims to scale quickly—10 more hubs in Gurugram are planned over the next three months, with an expanded network of 700 workers and 50 full-time staff. New markets like Mumbai and Bengaluru are next.
Ultimately, Sardana sees Pronto becoming a full-stack home services brand, starting with cleaning and laundry, but eventually offering everything from errands to elderly care.
In a market as dynamic—and demanding—as urban India, Pronto home services is betting that speed, trust, and fair labor can coexist. With fresh capital and growing traction, the startup is well-positioned to redefine what “instant” really means—both for customers and workers.
