On-demand home services startup Handy has closed a $15 million funding round with backing from Washington, D.C.-based VC firm Revolution Growth. The round was led by TPG Growth and includes Sound Ventures, the investment group founded by Ashton Kutcher.
Handy, formerly known as Handybook, curates a list of local home services for cleaning, repair and other needs in 28 cities. After an order is placed on the app, the customer gets the nearest and most available business on the list to come and do whatever needs to be done around your house. Revolution led the last $30 million round of funding for the startup in July. The new round brings the total raised by Handy to about $64 million according the company's reckoning.
"Handy executes extremely well on a simple, powerful concept,” Ashton Kutcher said in a statement. "To have a professional available at the push of a button whenever you have a problem in your home speaks to a universal desire. This reliable and quality care is why we are invested in the future of Handy."
Along with new funding, Handy has also hired Kenneth Little, the former senior vice president of engineering at Tumblr, as the new CTO for the company. Little, who also ran engineering at Etsy, will be in charge of adding new features and improving and growing the engineering team to handle 100,000 bookings a day in a few years.
“I’ve been fortunate to have spent my career working with companies that are at the forefront of digital media and e-commerce,” Little said in a statement. "What I’m most passionate about is technology that provides seamless and innovative solutions to improve the daily lives of consumers, and Handy does exactly that."
Handy has already scored some impressive contracts, acting as the exclusive cleaning service for Airbnb. The new money and talent will now be used to – if all goes according to plan – take the startup to the next stage of ubiquitous use, even as it faces a strong new competitor in Amazon.
"We’re excited to continue investing in the Handy platform to deliver the best experience for our hundreds of thousands of customers and the most flexible way of earning for our thousands of professionals," Handy CEO Oisin Hanrahan said in a statement.
