Nansi Mishra 1:35

Hi Anjali, welcome to The Neon Show.

Anjali Sardana 1:38

Thank you for having me.

Nansi Mishra 1:39

Very excited to chat with you today. And I’m just so amazed with the journey you have had in the last one year. You guys completed one year on April 1st, right?

Anjali Sardana 1:47

Yes, April 2nd.

Nansi Mishra 1:48

Congratulations.

Anjali Sardana 1:49

Thank you.

Nansi Mishra 1:50

So let’s just start with Pronto’s introduction for our audience who are not aware about what all you do. What is Pronto all about?

Anjali Sardana 1:59

Yeah. The simplistic form is that we are on-demand home services starting with house help. The broader vision, I think we can talk about later in this podcast. But I think the idea is the offline world for a lot of house help is very broken, both for the consumer and more so for the service workers in this segment. Professionals, as we call them. Which is customers find it very difficult to access services. You need someone to come in just for an hour and it’s totally offline. You’re going on MyGate, talking to neighbors, talking to the guards of the society. And then you’re just calling a bunch of phone numbers and someone comes, they’re late, they do a bad job and they haggle you for money and end to end, very high friction. And then the even larger problem is on the supply side where workers face consistent underemployment or unemployment, lack of income stability and lack of dignity, safety and respect in the workplace. And so this was the problem that we set out to solve. And today we are operating largely in the major metro areas, but we’re completing over 22,000 bookings a day. And we have over 5,000 professionals on our platform.

Nansi Mishra 3:16

Wow. Let’s just go back to the first 30 days, let’s say. Go back to Sector 56, Gurgaon, where it all started. How would the first 30 days look like and the original business model that you started working on?

Anjali Sardana 3:32

Yes, it was very, very, very jugaad, like very jugaad. I remember our first set of professionals. So Kapil, who is on our team from Day zero, he joined on March 18th or so, 2024, so a couple of weeks before launch. And he was tasked with recruiting our first set of professionals.

Nansi Mishra 3:55

And what’s his profile and how did you meet him?

Anjali Sardana 3:57

OK, so he’s a year older than me and he was working at Off Business. And he’s very Haryanvi, like very, very Haryanvi. And I knew, OK, I’m not at all. And we need someone who’s local in order to recruit the supply. So I knew my own limits. And I was like, we have to get someone who can do this job much better than me. And he came to meet me at the place where we were using as a makeshift office. And I spoke to him and then I said, when can you start? And he’s like, oh, I can give my notice, whatever. And I was like, we don’t have time for that.

So you start today. And we’ll deal with the consequences with Off Business later. Like we’ll cover the salary for this month and we’ll deal with whatever issues they have, when he came. And then the first day he went to Gata, which is a nearby, like some area near sector 56. And he went there and he was just wearing like a T-shirt and nobody would talk to him. They’re like, who’s this guy? So he’s like, OK, OK, what do I do? So he goes and he rents a car and he buys a white button up shirt and like 120 rupee gold chain. And he drives to S Block, which is, you know, in like near Nathpur in Gurgaon. And he stands on the car and he says, everyone listen up. I’m hiring for a huge company, like jobs available. And then the next day he showed up to the hub with 30 people. So that was our first set of professionals, which he managed to get through interesting means.

Nansi Mishra 5:32

This was week one.

Anjali Sardana 5:34

Yeah, this is like two weeks before launch. And then we had to figure out, OK, like how do we get like, you know, how do we get training done? But we no one knew anything. So then we went and found like very local people who could find us. So we found someone who works as a bathroom deep cleaner on another platform. And they came and taught like, you know, how to like, you know, clean the washroom. Then we got the local press to teach how to do ironing. And we were all learning as well. So we came up with a bunch of different methods. And then we need to get uniforms. And this is during Ramadan. So a lot of factories were closed and a lot of vendors were not open.

And so we’re like, OK, we found one guy, like Gita Fabs in Gurgaon, which is in Udyog Vihar. And we went and we just begged the guy, we’re like, please, please, we need 70 uniforms in like in literally like 72 hours. Like, please help us. And he’s like, OK, fine. He like charged us an arm and a leg, but we needed it. And then we we we had to also figure out how to pay our professionals. And we had no trust back then. By the way, we only were able to finish the incorporation of our company like three weeks before we launched. So we and we just barely got the razor pay integration done in time, because after after you incorporate your company, you then have to open a bank account. And that took way too long. So we almost launched without being able to collect payments. But we also didn’t have a way to pay our professionals and no one trusted us. And so our first payroll, I still remember we didn’t even know how much we owed until like that day. And it was the day before we launched and or two days before we launched. And I had to go and like find random cash in order to pay people. And I remember just driving around. I like extra I like hit my limit of how much cash I can extract from my bank account. And then I was like sending money through Remitly, which is like a remittance app to our like team members. And then I was just like borrowing cash from friends. So one very good friend like dropped off one lakh cash. And that was how we made the payroll happen.

Nansi Mishra 7:45

And then before the launch, how big the team was? How many people were there?

Anjali Sardana 7:49

It was like four or five people.

Nansi Mishra 7:51

And how many pros?

Anjali Sardana 7:52

30. Yeah, we also didn’t have a way even post launch. So we had like no tech built. The only tech was we had a customer app that worked around 30% of the time. And that’s being a little generous. And we would receive a Slack message, which had some like basic information about the customer, their address, what time they had booked. And that was the only tech we had. Like the tech stopped at that Slack message. So I sometimes I wonder like what our customers thought in those very early days was like happening after we placed the booking. Like I wonder if they thought we had some very fancy system built, but we had nothing. So it was just a Slack message. And that continued for a few months after that.

Nansi Mishra 8:34

But that also showed or gave you a very clear signal that the pain was really real to solve for. Yes. If the things are broken, the process is not in place, still people are somehow figuring out how to actually book the service. And that message gets delivered and you see it. That means the pain was real.

Anjali Sardana 8:52

Yeah. I’m very surprised that people put up with us and put up with that app. Like I don’t think I would have used it after a certain amount of time. And it actually got progressively more broken over time and not less because like after we reached like 500 users, it just entirely broke down. Like it was not built to scale beyond 500 users. That original v0.

Nansi Mishra 9:15

It is because you were more focused on on-ground execution, right?

Anjali Sardana 9:19

We just wanted to launch. We are just like, you know, launch fast. And then we like entirely rewrote. There is not a single line of code that is the same as it was back then. And so we didn’t have a way to track with a really high fidelity how many bookings each professional was doing. Therefore, variable pay was like impossible in the first few months. And so we were just paying like based on the number of hours that come, we would pay a fixed pay. But we also didn’t have a really great attendance system. And then we got a lot smarter over time. There is an interesting quote from the DoorDash founder. I think he like wrote this in the letter past like Citrini like report. And he said that they built the rider app first or like the delivery partner app first instead of the customer app. And I 100% understand why they did that. And if I were to do it all over again, that is something I would have done as well. We would have built the app for our professionals first before the app.

Nansi Mishra 10:18

Why?

Anjali Sardana 10:22

Because, okay, we’ll take the example. So like I think the only thing I’ve learned about product, I guess so far, is that like you should like you have the only thing that you need is what like what’s absolutely necessary. And like, let’s say you’re running Pronto. And you have like your customer app. And no, there’s a three, three sorts of like three tech stakeholders. You have your professional, you have your customer, and then you have operations in the middle. If I could only build one, I’d actually build the operations. And if I could only build two, I’d build operations and professional. And then I would build customer app third. Reason being, like your customer app, while it is a nice to have, but you can figure out workarounds if you don’t have it. Your operations tech is not a nice to have, it’s a must have. And any workaround won’t scale very far before it completely breaks.

Nansi Mishra 11:28

So for now, there are three apps, one for customers, one for pros and other for operations.

Anjali Sardana 11:34

Operations, we don’t have a mobile app built. It’s all like web based applications.

Nansi Mishra 11:40

And for pros, they have the app and there is a five day training program for them. And one day is spent on training them how to use the app. And what do we do in the remaining four days?

Anjali Sardana 11:52

Yeah, so those days are spent on hard skills. So actually how to dust, sweep, mop, everything. There is a big difference between someone who knows 90% of things and someone who knows 100% of things when you don’t know what they’re going to be asked in the customer home. And it’s very critical that they know 100% of what the customer is going to ask for. Second is they’re taught a specific SOP on how to do something very efficiently and done well. And that makes a very big difference in the output quality. So we did a lot of conversation with our customers on what does quality mean? And this is a little bit redundant, but the number one factor that customers care about for quality is quote, actual work quality, right? Which is like, what does that mean? It’s how well do they dust, sweep, mop? So customers do perceive actual differences between different providers in terms of how well they actually complete the task, right? And then you have soft skills, which are communication with the customers, greeting, all of that. And then you have grooming and hygiene standards, uniform, hair, all of that. And then there is how to use Google Maps, how to use the Pronto app, how to use your phone, all of that. And then how do you like… And then different trainings on like, okay, if X happens, you should do Y.

Nansi Mishra 13:12

And then they should already know how to drive, right?

Anjali Sardana 13:15

No. So if they’re going to be… So we call riding a two-wheeler self-transport.

And as contrast to walking, and if they choose to opt into that, then there’s an additional two-day training where they’re taught how to do that. And they’re tagged then in the system as ST. Okay.

Nansi Mishra 13:39

And this is just one step of the process, like five-day training. But I just want to understand the whole process that runs in the background.

Anjali Sardana 13:47

Yeah. So we have… As in onboarding or performance management?

Nansi Mishra 13:54

From the scratch, like…

Anjali Sardana 13:58

Like from lead comes in?

Nansi Mishra 14:00

Yes.

Anjali Sardana 14:00

Yes. Okay. So when a lead is generated in our system, it’ll come through our onboarding app, which is actually a separate app. And when someone is registered in our onboarding app, they’ll receive information where they’ll upload their documents, and then they’ll receive information about a screening if they qualify. And so then they’ll go to a screening center, or they’ll be in a location where a screener will come there. And this is just screening for basic qualifications in terms of behavioral intent and just basic characteristics, right?

Which are qualifications to the job, like ability to do the job. And then post that, they enter training. So that’s five days. In parallel, we’re running all the background checks. And then post that, they choose to do SE training or not, and then they’ll graduate. And then post-graduation, they’re in the pool. And what happens is there is now a performance management function which runs. So they’ll do daily handholding with their trainer for the first couple months on the platform. And then post that, there is, again, performance management function which runs. And there’s quality audits. And so if any quality incident were to arise, then that gets flagged immediately. And someone from the quality team will then investigate that and either recommend retraining or say, OK, nothing was at fault here. And based on that judgment, the course of action is taken.

Nansi Mishra 15:32

Now I want to cover the demand and supply aspect of Pronto. Because to make Pronto succeed, you have to get both things right, right? And it’s been one year. We have done more than 5 lakh bookings?

Anjali Sardana 15:45

In March alone.

Nansi Mishra 15:46

In March alone?

Anjali Sardana 15:48

Yes.

Nansi Mishra 15:49

OK.

Anjali Sardana 15:49

And how many bookings we get daily? So as of this week, we’re getting around on weekdays around 21,000. And weekends is around 15% to 20% bump on top of that.

Nansi Mishra 15:59

Oh, very interesting. And we are present in all these tier one cities, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore.

Anjali Sardana 16:07

Yes. I mean, the largest part of our business is in NCR. But that’s an artifact of where we started.

Nansi Mishra 16:15

So Anjali, if you can just share your insights about both demand and supply sides. When you started, what were the expectations?

Anjali Sardana 16:25

The understanding at the very start was directionally correct, but had about 1% of the depth that the understanding I have today or we have today is. In terms of customer profile, I think from the outset, people assume it’s largely bachelors who are using this. Our initial pilots told us that actually that wasn’t the case. It’s families. And that has been validated in where we are today. And the vast majority of our customers are usually married, sometimes with kids. The interesting thing is the number one driving factor for whether a certain area will have high demand is actually what percent of the women who live there are working. So I think what we realized over time, and we understood at the start, OK, it’s largely women who are handling this for the household. And this is largely their stress that we are taking away.

We become that management layer between someone and their house help. But it’s largely driven by if the women in the house are working, then you’ll see much, like much, much faster uptake, much, much faster adoption. And so you also see, I think when we started in Gurgaon, we saw a very clear demand pattern for the day and by hour of the day. And we assumed that that was going to hold true for every city. In fact, I was thinking about how do we shape our operations around this demand pattern of the day. And I’m very glad we didn’t make moves towards that, because as we expanded into new cities, what we found is that, and this is obvious in hindsight, that people in different cities actually have a different cadence for their life. So Mumbai and Delhi, like Delhi proper, for example, have less of a culture of going to office. So you’ll see that demand is relatively spread through the day. So morning or late morning, early afternoon, late afternoon, you’ll see demand basically from around 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. And you won’t see demand too late and you won’t see demand too early. The inverse is true in places where people are going to office. So Bangalore and Gurgaon, you’ll see a lot of demand comes in the morning, right? So before work hours. And that’s where you’ll see the majority of your demand. And then you’ll see it in the after work hours and the afternoons are a bit of a lull. And so I’m glad we didn’t start to shape our operations too much around the patterns that exist in Gurgaon. And we held off on those things because obviously, again, obvious in hindsight, but life is very, very regional, both on the demand and supply side. So we had a lot of assumptions even on the supply side that were true in Gurgaon, but were not true in other cities. So we’ll talk about Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore, how supply behaves differently.

So in Gurgaon, everyone there is migrant, almost all the labor is migrant and largely coming from West Bengal and Bihar. And everyone there is hustling to pay rent and is highly, highly elastic to making the amount they need in order to pay that rent and is willing to work quite hard and will also adapt to more rule changes and is less resistant to, OK, as we evolve our operations, things change how they’re done. People, the pros we have in Gurgaon are usually pretty adaptable to that versus you’ll see in Mumbai, a lot of the supply is not really migrant from another part of India. Maybe they’re from a different part of Maharashtra, but largely they’re actually living in Mumbai. And one thing that’s true is in some areas in Mumbai, the government does these development projects. And when they do development projects, they actually give ownership of that land to the people who live there. And so the people who are living in these some areas are not necessarily hustling to pay rent because they actually own that land. And that colors significantly the dynamic and the adaptability of professionals in Mumbai and their behavior. And they’re just in general on festivals, they’re less likely to be migrating to another region. And therefore, after the festival is over.

Nansi Mishra 20:58

How does it all affect Pronto?

Anjali Sardana 21:01

So, OK, here’s the thing. If there is a festival in, let’s say there’s a festival in Gurgaon, people will leave for their hometown and they will come back. But there’ll be significant lag to when they come back because their hometown is quite far. And so they won’t miss a festival, but there’ll also be a lag by the time they come back. And so it can end up being a one day festival. Someone has gone for 10 days, right? Versus in Mumbai, because there’s less distance between where people are from and where they’re living, or perhaps this is one and the same, they’ll still leave for the festival. But there isn’t that like one day doesn’t become 10 days.

Nansi Mishra 21:48

We’re talking about customers here or pros?

Anjali Sardana 21:50

Pros. Fully just pros. You’ll see in Bangalore, a lot of the supply, the professionals are from extremely far. They’re from the northeast. And so often for festivals, they don’t go. They stay in Bangalore. But when they do go, they’re likely not coming back. So you see three different patterns. So Mumbai people are relatively local. They’ll go, but they’ll only be gone for that day. Gurgaon, our professionals will go, but one day becomes 10 days. And then in Bangalore, they’ll either not go or they’ll go and they’ll never come back.

Nansi Mishra 22:24

How would you solve this? So this is for Gurgaon?

Anjali Sardana 22:29

A couple of things we do. One is for most festivals, we run festival bonuses, which people then stay. And then they’ll take time off maybe after the festival in some staggered manner. So for anyone who wants to stay, they’ll stay. Second is, we also proactively try to maintain diversity in our professional pool for many reasons. One is that it means you’re never overexposed to any given festival. The third thing is, ultimately, you have to just reduce capacity for demand. So oftentimes on festivals, you’ll see slots are booked out. Maybe supply is, we add new supply, but some professionals are leaving and therefore net zero on professional growth. And then caps will be limited and you’ll see everything’s booked out. And so largely, when you think about how does what I’m talking about affect you as a customer, it’s that it affects your ability to get a booking, to get a slot. Because ultimately, we are a business that we can only service demand if we have professionals who are working that day.

Nansi Mishra 23:38

Makes sense. And what about the demand side?

Anjali Sardana 23:44

So we are supply constrained, not demand constrained. I would say that we don’t work too hard on demand. And on any given day, all of our slots end up getting booked out. Our utilization on the platform is well north of 60%. And that’s a blended across very new geos where we’re running at lower utilization and places that are quite mature. And for us, the frontier is reducing travel time, which allows us to increase utilization. But in terms of the patterns we see is there’s three primary use cases. One is ad hoc, my house help is missing for the day. And this is like an emergency backup situation. Second is supplementary. So someone who already has house help who doesn’t have time to do everything. The example I’ll give is there’s like a auntie in Mumbai who I’ve spoken with. And she used to get her fans cleaned once every two to three weeks. But now that Pronto is available and it’s easier, she gets her fans cleaned every week because it’s just readily available and it’s easier. Sort of like the Uber thesis of the TAM actually expands based on how easy it is to access.

So the net number of people who are taking a taxi or Uber ride now versus we’re taking taxi rides back then per capita is much higher. So people are simply transiting more. People are simply accessing services more because it’s easier to access. And it’s the convenience that allows for the TAM to ultimately expand. You also see people who they have full-time house help. I know many, many people like this where they live in like a multi-generational family home and they have a couple people who are already helping out. But there’s just so much work. And their offline house help are largely taking care of the things that take care of the kids or cooking. And so then tasks like cleaning don’t get done. And then they book Pronto for that. And then there’s primary, which is we are your only house help service. The second two use cases of supplementary and primary are what we focus on. And those are ones where quality matters more. I think in the emergency backup use case, that’s only one to three times a month. And because it’s an emergency backup, availability matters more than quality.

And so what happens is any platform who’s available, and those are going to be also your price shoppers. So someone is going to check every app, see who’s available and what’s the lowest cost, and then book that. And versus supplementary and primary, those are people who are using this for a voluntary use case. It’s not just emergency backup. And therefore, quality matters more than just availability. And therefore, they’re less likely to just be price shopping. Plus the frequency is much higher. Look, if you think about what does India spend on house help, and then you think about what percent will ever shift online to a platform like this, call it 10-15% at max. If you’re only going after my house help is missing for the day market by focusing on availability rather than quality, you end up being TAM restricted. You’ll be in someone’s home on average, two days out of 30.

Nansi Mishra 26:53

So basically, Pronto would want to replace the regular house help, right? So the frequency is more.

Anjali Sardana 27:01

Yes, exactly.

Nansi Mishra 27:01

And for the supply side also, it is a good sign because then for the house help also, when she is part of Pronto, it’s more regularized platform, right? She will never be out of work.

Anjali Sardana 27:15

I mean, that is a function of demand and supply balance and shaping of the two, right? I don’t think any professional on our platform is worried about not having enough work. That’s definitely not the case. That being said, what having a primary use case does is it provides a lot of stability. So if you’re purely a voluntary platform, you’ll have very spiky demand, right? Even within, let’s say, sector 56, you might have very spiky demand based on what’s happening.

Nansi Mishra 27:47

What do you mean by voluntary?

Anjali Sardana 27:49

As in, if you’re just an emergency backup platform, there’s very little predictability as to when people are going to need the platform. And therefore, you might see spiky demand. I will say in aggregate, it probably smooths out, right? Because it will over a large enough end. But on a micro market basis, you could end up seeing a lot of demand spikes. And either you have more professionals on the platform to be able to service the spikes, or you lose out on a lot of demand. And what being in a primary or supplementary use case does is it provides more regular patterns of demand, which allow you to have much more stable demand, like stable and growing demand in a certain micro market. And so professionals who are working in that micro market, don’t see too many random spikes or troughs.

Nansi Mishra 28:38

And with so many bookings now done through Pronto and presence in top four cities in India. So what have you learned about Indian consumers? Because obviously, when you started, you had some notions. And then when the platform was live, and in the next one year, a lot of things would have happened.

Anjali Sardana 28:58

This is the number one problem we have, where we have to… This is, I think, the biggest part of our mission, which is we have to change the culture and the way we think about the type of work that our professionals do, right? It’s not lesser than work, right? It is just as dignified as every other job. And I feel very passionately about this. And it’s part of why you see, we give a uniform to our professionals, and we have an ID badge, and they go home. And for the first time, they feel like, I’m part of this company, right? I work a real job. Look at my uniform. Look at my badge. I’m part of this company, and I have a real job. But there should be no sense of real job versus not. And another thing is, I see people online who are criticizing us and being like, oh, you’re taking away this relationship between a customer and a household. And it’s like, first of all, what are you talking about, right? What is this relationship? When anything goes missing in the house, the first person you blame is the household. Would you blame your family member? Would you fire your family member and kick them out of the house if you end up randomly accusing them of stealing something, of something went missing? No, you don’t, right? They’re not a family member, and you don’t ultimately treat them that way, and every person you ask or talk about this with always says that they treat their household well. Like, oh yeah, other people treat them badly, but not me. No, we don’t make them use some other cup or plate. That’s not what that means. That is not what treating someone well means.

That’s such a baseline thing that you’re not treating them like an animal, right? It’s terrible that people aren’t able to reflect and look in the mirror, and no one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants to think that they’re a bad person, but ultimately, how can you say that… How can every person tell me that they treat their household well, right? That cannot be the case, right? And the other part of it is, like, why are you resisting? Why is there resistance, and why do you want to deny, you know, people who are like our professionals or this segment of workers from the protections and dignity of formal labor, right? These people cannot access formal credit because you pay them under the table, and they don’t have a PAN card. They’re not depositing this in a bank account, so they have to take loans from a chit fund, right? And they store their money in a chit fund, and then they get robbed, essentially. The person just takes their money away, or they’re stuck in some, like, 80% interest rate loan, right? They don’t have health insurance.

They don’t have safety, like, basic safety protections that we have in the workplace, right? Where, you know, if something happens to someone who’s working in a home offline, what happens, right? If they walk out, they lose their income. Now they have no income stability. If something happens and they go to the police, the police will never take their side. They’ll always take the side of the customer, right? So why is it, why are people saying you’re taking away this relationship when what they really mean is you’re taking away the ability to exploit these people, right? Why are we denying them the protections of formal labor and employment, right, which you would never deny to a corporate worker, right? I could say the same thing, like, why do you work at your company formally, right? Why do you need an employment agreement? You should just show up every day and, like, handshake you have a relationship with the guy who owns the company and, like, don’t worry, like, everything will be fine. And you shouldn’t ask for an employment agreement because why are you trying to deny the relationship and bond you have with the CEO?

That makes no sense, right? No one would ever agree to that. Why do we have, you know, like a workplace safety, you know, like government agencies, right? It’s for a reason. And why are you denying that for people in this segment? It’s like, it doesn’t make any sense to me. And it’s this weird sort of, like, patronizing, like, just like truly patronizing way of looking at these, this segment of workers, like infantilizing them as if they’re like, you know, they don’t deserve to have formal labor where they should just be in this, like, weird, like, familial relationship with their employer who might also just screw them over, right? Very often what happens, and no one talks about this, people will work for a month at, you know, a home, and the home has already decided they’re going to fire them. And at the end of the month, they just don’t pay them.

And they’re just screwed. Their entire month’s income is gone, right? And there’s no protection for them because they’re not working in a formal environment versus, you know, for us, whatever number it shows on the app, that’s how much you’re going to get paid. And it will come into your bank account, right? And we will make sure that we will help you get a PAN, right? So that you can actually access formal credit. You’re not having to go take a loan from a chit fund or store your money in somewhere where it might get stolen, right? If something happens to you at a home, you should walk out. You should walk out and immediately call us. And this is a huge part of our training, which is, you know, in the offline world, you don’t have agency. On Pronto, you do have agency, and we want you to use it. We are not okay with you being mistreated. If you feel uncomfortable, you should not do the booking. You should not enter the home. You should leave the home. You should call us immediately. We will have someone there in minutes, right, to respond to you. And we will give you health insurance, all of this. And it’s very important to me that we formalize more and more of the labor market because it’s the only way for India to progress from the rut it’s been stuck in, right? Because if you resist formalization, so many people will always be unprotected by the system, right? And so many people will be denied the ability to actually progress, right? And so this is super, super important to me. And I think the number one mission is we have to change the culture and the way we think about work. Like every job has dignity. Every type of work is equally dignified and equally work.

Nansi Mishra 34:48

This frustrates you the most.

Anjali Sardana 34:49

I think I’m visibly irritated by this. I think the vision for Pronto, which is like the 30-year vision, and obviously very far from now, is to organize and formalize all unskilled or low-skilled informal labor in India. And that means going across not just B2C, but also B2B, retail, construction, manufacturing, every part of the economy where informal labor touches is where we want to go.

Nansi Mishra 35:14

So earlier VCs would only back businesses that were replicated in India. They already existed in other markets. So would you be raising another round from India or like it’s a totally opposite situation, right? American investors are truly understanding the Indian problem.

Anjali Sardana 35:33

Yeah, I think obviously early investors just took a bet on me. They’re agnostic to the problem or the geography. It’s just a bet on me. But I think our later investors understood the problem. And largely, it’s around labor organization rather than like you don’t need the cultural context necessarily of house help. You can understand that, okay, hey, most labor in India is informal. Most labor in India is unorganized and also unskilled and low-skilled. This is a problem to be solved. Inefficient markets which become efficient over time can generate value for the person who does that, for whoever catalyzes that. I mean, that’s like a very basic principle which people can get behind. And it’s a super large TAM. But I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day, who we raise from is based on who we think the right partners are. And we’ve been extremely lucky so far to have amazing partners on board. And that is the most important metric for me.

Nansi Mishra 36:40

And do you see real excitement about Indian market in different markets?

Anjali Sardana 36:47

I’d say no. I don’t think most investors in the US are interested in India at the moment, given that the opportunity cost is high not investing in AI. And almost all AI companies are in SF. And anyone who starts here ends up moving there.

Nansi Mishra 37:02

And I also want to talk about the hiding side of things at Pronto. So I was watching this interview with Snabbit founder and he very interestingly shared that he had worked with Zepto before starting Snabbit. So this is how he would pitch to all the early employees that I have worked with Zepto. And that confidence gave a lot of confidence to early employees to join him. And then once he raised funding from Nexus, he would tell that Nexus has backed Rapido and Zepto. And now they’re backing Snabbit. So there is clearly something they can see. So that’s how he hired other bunch of folks. So this was his pitch after funding. So just want to understand from you, what was your pitch to early team members? How many team members you had before funding? And then what changed after funding?

Anjali Sardana 37:58

So before funding, I had one team member.

Nansi Mishra 38:01

One team member?

Anjali Sardana 38:02

Yeah, yeah.

He was an intern.

Nansi Mishra 38:09

This was this off business guy?

Anjali Sardana 38:11

No, no, no. He came shortly after. I’ll talk about the early employees. So Aman, I hired him. He was on the journey for a very long time before funding because he joined from day zero. The pilots happened with him. And the pitch to him, I think he just wanted to learn. I was going to pay him and I just talked to him about the vision and he was sold and he joined and very low stakes to him because he wasn’t full time. Our first full time employee came. So before we had funding, I wanted to hire people. I want to hire one more person. So I interviewed a ton of people and I had the cheapest headhunter of all time. This one kid from D.U. who I messaged on LinkedIn. He was like, I’m not interested, but I run this group chat of kids at D.U. who are looking for internships and jobs. And I was like, OK, how much is it to post? He’s like 400 rupees. So I was like, OK, bet I’ll pay you. And it’s like a it’s a success fee, right? Only if you get hired, you have to pay 400 rupees. So I was like, OK, bet. Let’s do it. And then I interviewed a whole bunch of people. I hired one more intern from that. So interns were only 260 rupees. So I paid that. But then I had offered a full time job for this one person. And then he had a consulting job at ZS. And I got a consulting job, but you should meet my best friend. He’s interested. And he also could have gone and done consulting, but he wanted to do a startup. So I talked to him and there’s nothing I can say other than just telling people the vision and why I want to do this. And I’d love to. I’ve asked him several times. I honestly don’t know why he took a bet on me. And there was no reason to. I didn’t work anywhere. I went to a college, which no one in India would have heard of. I wasn’t from there. We had nothing at the time. We had no money. And still, he took a bet on me. But he asked me for a salary, which was out of my budget. So I said, I’m going to raise funding in a couple of weeks and then we’ll talk. But for now, I can’t afford you. And then a couple of weeks later, we raised our first round. And he was emailing me several times during that period. And he followed up and it was my first conversation post that fundraising. I said, OK, we got money. I can pay you the salary. And I was like, OK, it’s your final round interview. And I told him, OK, he lives in Rohini right now. And he was in GK that day. And I got on the call and I said, OK, take the metro to Gurgaon sector 56 and go on board one professional. Get her Aadhaar, get everything on board and on board her. And I told him, you have seven days to do this. And he said, OK, I’m on it. And he cuts the call. In the middle of the conversation, he cuts it. And then like three hours later, I got a call from him and he said, I did it. Onboarded. And he sends me the Aadhaar. He sends me all the information. And I was a year hired on the spot. And he’s been with us now for over a year. And I honestly, I’m not sure what caused him to take a bet. It was his full time job. He could have gone and done consulting or something instead. But he just took a bet on me. I don’t have credentials. He wanted to join before we even had money. There was no track record. It was just a bet on me. And then like a business couple, the person you were referring to. I think it was just a bet on me and believing in me and the vision and wanting to build something and want to be part of a mission. And that was it. And I think over time, we built a very solid team, very tenured folks on the team. And I don’t sell them on credentials. I don’t say I worked anywhere. I don’t talk about, you know…

Nansi Mishra 42:05

What’s the average age of your team?

Anjali Sardana 42:06

That’s a good question. Maybe like 26, 27, 28 maybe. I think I’m on within the corporate team. I’m probably like one of the five youngest people, maybe like so. So there’s a few people that are younger than me. Oldest person would be like 38 or so. But yeah, like maybe 28 is the average. I don’t sell people on like, you know, I used to work here. What would I even say? I used to be in college. I worked for six months at Bain Capital, which no one cares about.

Nansi Mishra 42:47

Was it difficult for you to hire?

Anjali Sardana 42:50

So I just talk about my vision. I talk about why we are building what we’re building, where we want to go. And people who are aligned with the mission and believe in the vision join. And it’s built a very distinct culture where people are very missionary and not mercenary, which is one of the first things. So after we raised our Series A from Gladebrook and General Catalyst, there’s an operating partner at Gladebrook, Sharish, who’s amazing, incredible. And he’s one of the best people at talent, I think, in the world. Even though it’s not his full-time job, he used to be in product at Uber. And he taught me as we were drawing out the work structure. Because at the time when we raised the Series A, the team was five people, including myself. And max age was 24. So we had to build a team. And he told me, it’s extremely important that the people we hire are missionaries and not mercenaries. Mercenaries are people who optimize for their self-gain. They’re just there for money. And they don’t care about the mission. When things are hard, they’ll leave. Versus missionaries are people who are not optimizing for themselves. They’re trying to grow the company. They’re bought in. And they’ll be there when things are hard. And they’ll be the ones to get us out of that. And I think that’s why I’ve never tried to sell someone on our investors have backed these other companies. Or I used to work here on some sort of credentials and pedigree. Nor are we selling people on really high comp or something. We’ve never done that. People who join are there for the mission. They’re there because they believe in the vision. And to an extent, believe in me and believe in the team. And that has led to just building a culture that’s very missionary, not mercenary. And I think ultimately, that’s how you win. Because everything’s about the team. Everything’s about the team.

Nansi Mishra 44:50

But funding made a difference. To hire at least senior leaders?

Anjali Sardana 44:57

I’d say, yes. It made it easier. One is we had the money to at least afford having a team.

That was the biggest thing. The second thing is…

Nansi Mishra 45:10

More conviction in founder?

Anjali Sardana 45:12

More than that. There was more publicity about the company. And that made it easier to hire than anything else. It’s like employer branding, in a sense. I think there’s more credibility towards the future of the company as you raise more funding. People can more credibly see. That being said, a lot of our senior leadership was hired before the Series A was even announced. So we had only announced $2 million in seed funding by the time a lot of people signed on. And almost no one has been hired post the Series B announcement.

Who was sold on that? I think broadly, it makes it easier because you can pay people. And there’s more publicity about the company. But I will never be the one to sell anyone saying, hey, you should come work at Pronto because our investors backed all these other companies. I’ll never be the one to say, I used to work at these places. Therefore, you should come work for me. That doesn’t mean anything. At the end of the day, there are many, many, many people who work at those companies. There are many, many companies which are backed by these investors. Ultimately, this person doesn’t have the same ability to diversify the way an investor would. It doesn’t have the ability to hire many, many people the way your previous company would. They’re taking a bet on you. And therefore, if they’re just there for money or for some sort of pedigree, they’re not people who are going to stick through the hard times.

Nansi Mishra 46:54

So Anjali, you guys started this company on April 2nd, 2025. It’s been one year, have raised $40 million at $100 million valuation. This is clearly a capital intensive business, right? So how do you make sure in coming years that you don’t compromise with, like you would always want speed, but street level understanding you would never want to compromise with? How would you do that? How would you balance it out?

Anjali Sardana 47:25

I don’t think those two things are at odds, like street level understanding and speed. I mean, I spend a decent portion of my time at our hubs on ground talking to folks, talking to pros, hub managers, cluster managers, all of that. And I think that’s super important as we continue because a lot of insights can only be gained from being on the ground, right? In an operations business, metrics will only tell you so much. They tell you what you’re trying to measure. They don’t tell you how that metric was achieved, what was gained. They don’t even tell you the full picture, right? You don’t have full visibility of why things are happening, what’s going on, what’s going on behind the metrics, right? Or in between the metrics, right?

And therefore, being on ground is actually even more important if you want to move fast, because your ability to detect problems is much, much, much faster if you are actually spending time on ground.

Nansi Mishra 48:24

I was talking to Matt from Rippling. He was COO at Rippling and he was telling me that Rippling founder, Peter Conrad, he still runs the payroll every single month. So that’s because he wants to understand and he wants to be very close to the problem they are solving as an organization. So is there anything that you would always want to do at Pronto that’s very close to your heart? That gives you a lot of understanding about the groundwork.

Anjali Sardana 48:58

I always want to work from our hubs. We spent the first seven months of the company without an office. We worked from our hub in Sector 56, Gurgaon, then we moved to Bangalore and that was the first time we had an office. I never want to stop working from our hubs. I actually feel way more energy to work when I’m at our hub on ground rather than sitting in some corporate office. I just feel a lot more energy. You learn so, so much every hour at the hub and going to different hubs. Another thing I do is, someone’s going on a booking and I’ll trail behind them. I’ll note down, this second they did this and then this many seconds later this happened and this many minutes and seconds later this happened. You learn a lot from that. You’re able to discover a lot of problems, a lot of inefficiencies in the way we operate and a lot of things that we can just do better, ways we can make the pro experience better. What are we doing that doesn’t make sense?

Nansi Mishra 50:01

What’s the most interesting problem you have solved being a hub? Take your time and think about it.

Anjali Sardana 50:08

It’s a good question. Well, so this is a problem we haven’t solved, which is it takes a long time to get Mygate entry from customers. This is a big problem. We haven’t solved this. We’re still figuring it out. ah It affects a lot of on-time fulfillment metrics, but also it’s like ah time is money for us and 10 minutes is 10 minutes that could have been revenue generating time on a different booking. And so we’re actually still figuring out how to solve that.

Nansi Mishra 50:36

And why does it take time?

Anjali Sardana 50:38

People just don’t do it on time. The person arrives, they don’t answer the call or they didn’t do the pre-approval or they just are doing something else and are like, yeah, I’ll do it in a few minutes.

Nansi Mishra 50:48

So, that’s a people problem. What part of Pronto are you most proud about?

Anjali Sardana 50:55

Our professionals and how we’ve been able to scale our number of professionals while maintaining high quality and really great experience for them. Our retention is actually only getting better for our professionals. Monthly is 70 plus percent and NPS is high. We’ve been able to do that with really high quality and we’ve been able to scale our number of professionals. We started in November with only 857 professionals or so. And in the last five months, we have been able to 6x our 7x, our number of professionals. And in the same time, our demand has 8x, 9x. I’m very proud of the way that we’ve been able to scale with quality and be able to do that without compromising the experience for our professionals.

Nansi Mishra 51:49

And this is your first time building the business. You’re a first time founder. It’s just been one year. Obviously, a lot of things have happened in this one year. What’s that one value that you started the business with and you would always want to keep that value alive within the company?

Anjali Sardana 52:10

Urgency. Pace is everything. We’ve only been able to accomplish so much in one year because we move really, really fast. And if we slow down, then I want it to be that every year we accomplish significantly more than we did in the previous year. And it’s only possible with keeping the urgency very high. And the question should always be, why will this be done tomorrow? Why can’t it be done today? Why can’t it be done in one hour? And if you think about it, most things are sequential. If you do something, you’ll either unlock the next step or you’ll just learn something that allows you to action and solve a problem faster or solve a problem you didn’t even know you had. And therefore, every day, hour, minute, second is very, very precious. And doing something incrementally one hour faster, one minute faster allows you to just do the next thing or understand something or realize something or discover something one minute, hour, day faster. And that allows you to just progress much faster and build much faster. I’m very afraid of the default timeline slipping within Pronto. If the default timeline is next week, why is it not? We can’t let that become next month.

Nansi Mishra 53:31

I think Pronto’s success depends a lot on this factor.

Anjali Sardana 53:36

Absolutely. I think every month for us is like one year. Our fiscal year is the month. Our fiscal quarter is the week. And I think keeping that as the central way we orient is super important. And if we don’t do that, then the default timeline will slip. There’s no next quarter. Next quarter is like some other lifetime.

Nansi Mishra 54:06

For you, who are the other companies that have value urgency as one of the core values and who are doing it so well?

Anjali Sardana 54:16

I think Uber in the early days did this extremely well. They scaled extremely fast. They expanded to many, many, many cities at once. And people told them it didn’t make sense. Why are they doing that? And they wouldn’t be able to do it. And then they just rigorously questioned why not. They figured out a way to get it done. And then, even more interesting, when Uber Eats launched, they were benchmarking themselves against Postmates and Grubhub and all these others. And they were growing at a certain rate and they were growing faster. But rather than comparing themselves to benchmarks and saying, okay, we’re growing way faster than Postmate, they said, okay, at the same time, Uber, the core rides business was growing at 300% week on week. 50% is not good enough. We have to grow 300%. And I think they had a culture of A, pushing what’s possible and raising the bar of what people understood to be possible in terms of urgency and speed of scaling. And they also then held themselves to that. These are really, really high standards. I think it’s really easy to compare yourself against your direct competitors without understanding that maybe your direct competitors are just not very good companies. And therefore, you should benchmark yourself against the very best.

And the very best might just be another version of yourself. Why one month can you grow 80% month on month and the next month, you can only grow 50% month on month? You shouldn’t accept like, yeah, 50% is much better than what other people are doing. You should say, why not 100%, right? And so I really respect Travis and Uber, especially in the early days for the culture they had. And it was very much what I tried to emulate of like being very, in some senses, like swashbuckling, but more so just like move extremely fast, do whatever it takes, find a way to do it. And ultimately, I believe execution is two things. It’s caring that something will get done and doing whatever it takes to get it done, right? And pushing the pace of execution is everything that matters, right? In building a company.

Nansi Mishra 56:18

And Anjali, I was reading one of your posts on LinkedIn. I really like all your posts. Honestly, you should accept my LinkedIn request.

Anjali Sardana 56:26

Oh, shoot. Sorry. Wait, I’ll do it right now.

Nansi Mishra 56:28

So I was reading this recent post of yours. And you mentioned that privilege is the word that’s used for you. And Pronto and now for your customers also. What do you think about it? How do you see that?

Anjali Sardana 56:46

Yeah, I want to clarify that earlier point, which is I have like 30,000 LinkedIn requests. So it’s not that I am trying not to accept someone’s request. And if anyone I know is watching this podcast and wondering why I didn’t accept the request, I literally have 30,000 connection requests. And I get like, literally like hundreds every day. So it’s not me trying to be rude. But on privilege, I mean, it’s the way I wrote in the post, which is ultimately, we are building a win-win-win business, right? We were trying to uplift everyone. The problem is that this market is broken for customers, sure. But it’s even more broken for workers in this segment. And our only hope is to be able to solve this inefficiency and build a system that works for everyone. And I don’t hope that gets labeled as privilege. But I do think relative to the offline world, it is a significant uplift to everyone involved. And I think that people always say different things. Ultimately, I know what we’re building. People I care about know what we’re building and know why we’re doing it and know where we’re coming from. And that’s all that matters, right? Ultimately, people can say whatever they want. But the output metric is all that matters to me.

Nansi Mishra 58:13

And what’s that output metric for you, if you can just tell us in one sentence?

Anjali Sardana 58:18

We are building a win-win-win business, right? We want to make it so that workers don’t suffer from income instability, underemployment, lack of dignity, safety, respect. We want to make it so that it’s easy to access services that are reliable and high quality. And obviously, us in the middle, build a profitable business. And that’s the goal.

Nansi Mishra 58:39

Like you said, this is a broken market, right? Why nobody else was solving for it? Till very recently now, we have two, three players. Was there lack of intent or it was just so difficult to do it?

Anjali Sardana 58:59

I think it’s a few things. One is, I will say, people who tried this very early on, let’s say, even pre-COVID, let’s say, but especially pre-Jio, people didn’t have mobile phones. And even if they had a mobile phone, they didn’t have data. Jio made data cheap, made all this possible, right? I don’t think any of these businesses would exist if it weren’t for Reliance. But the second class of it were people who started after when it was possible and then didn’t take off. And I think it’s largely because they weren’t approaching the problem the right way, where it’s like really easy to be and everyone wants to be like an Uber style matching platform, like very, very sexy business and versus doing what we do is like very, very hands on, very operationally intense, and not the sexy and easy thing to build. And therefore, I think, even if people realize what was required, they didn’t take that step.

Nansi Mishra 1:00:02

And I don’t want to sound rude, and I wish all the best to you in Pronto. But if Pronto fails, what do you think would be the reason?

Anjali Sardana 1:00:14

We won’t fail.

Nansi Mishra 1:00:19

Love the energy, but execution I hoped you would say.

Anjali Sardana 1:00:25

Yeah, so ultimately the company that wins in this segment will be the one that provides the best quality service, that most reliable service. And losing would mean failing on the parameters of quality, safety, reliability. Losing would mean poor pro retention and experience, because ultimately the only way to provide high quality, safe, reliable service to our customers is by scaling and retaining a very high quality supply pool, and therefore retention is super important. So losing would be a function of poor execution on both the customer and supply side.

Nansi Mishra 1:01:04

And what’s next for Pronto? And how do you split your day, like solving existing problems and figuring out how to pick the new problems? Because you’re a solo founder, and this is operational intense business.

Anjali Sardana 1:01:23

Yes. I was given this advice four or five months ago, which was you as a founder, whatever you focus on is what you will see progress in and movement in. And if you don’t pay attention to something or you don’t actually spend time on it, then it will never progress. It’ll never get any better. And so what I think about is, OK, what are the parts of the business this week? And I mean, literally the number of hours you’re spending. Look at your calendar, see where you’re spending the hours. That’s where you will see progress. And I think about, OK, what are usually the one to two things which really need to see progress or movement or improvement? And that’s where I will spend my time. And those priorities change over time, and therefore I spend my hours differently. But that’s literally how I think about the number of hours that I spend.

Nansi Mishra 1:02:15

And I know it’s just been one year, but you have solved pretty big number of problems in this last one year. What are the most challenging problems, learnings you had and the problems you solved? Hence, the learnings came from solving those problems. Like you said that you talked to one of your investors, closely worked with him and learned how and why you should be hiring missionaries, not mercenaries. What are the other learnings? Because at Neon also we invest in a lot of young researchers, data scientists who are 24 year old, 23 year old. And we’re very excited about that, about them and the problems they are solving and the kind of energy they have. So if you can just tell us some learnings you have had recently and what are the advantages you have being a young founder? Like I have heard from our founders, would love to listen from you.

Anjali Sardana 1:03:13

There are a lot of advantages to being a young founder. You’re not bogged down by any biases or the way things should be done. It’s an advantage and a disadvantage. Like you make more mistakes that maybe would have been avoidable. But you can from first principles figure out how you think things should be done. And I think I’m also in a market where existing structures and way things have been done like ultimately do not work. That’s why nothing worked in the past. And things have to be done differently. And that’s why not having any biases or priors of the way things should be done is actually super, super important.

And we don’t take decisions based on what other people are doing. We just take decisions based on first principles. And we’re as a company not very reactive. We march to the beat of our own drum. And I think that largely comes from being a young founder and that’s led to our success. I think a lot of people have told me along the way, like well after launch, you know, why the hell are you doing things this way or like you’re doing things the wrong way or, you know, like very obviously look at it, whatever else is doing, you should be doing it that way. And I am very thankful that we never, I never listened to that. Like I’m always open to new ideas. And if someone questions things, like we try a lot of different things. We experiment with a lot of different things. And I’m like, but based on those experiments, we’re taking decisions not based on what other people are doing. One of the biggest lessons, which I carry with me and has sort of become central to my life philosophy is something that Gwade Brooke told me when I was going through.

Nansi Mishra 1:04:51

Who told you?

Anjali Sardana 1:04:52

Gwade Brooke, one of our Series A investors. Back when we were going through kind of a tough time, just like internally, last fall was we’re going through this like tough period. And rather than like get on me for decisions that were taken, they just asked me, like, what would you learn from this experience? And I like talked about it. And the takeaway was like in company building, there will be a lot of ups and downs. But if you keep beating yourself up about or getting too bogged down in the things that you made mistakes on or your losses, you’ll never move forward and you won’t be able to execute. And ultimately, the mindset became you either win or you learn, which I believe is some like quote, which some like random like cricketer said or something like some recently, which was like a mistake. But that has become very central to my life philosophy is you either win or you learn. And I now see basically everything that happens through that lens of like either really great things happens or it’s a learning opportunity. I think that was the same thing that was true in college, where the things that pushed me and ultimately led me to grow the most and learn the most were things that were really difficult and challenging and negative. Right. Like I say in college, I didn’t really learn too much academically. I just grew a lot as a person. And a lot of that personal growth happened after like very, very bad, like just a very negative experiences. And the same is true in company building, where you learn the most is when challenging things happen, when you don’t win.

Nansi Mishra 1:06:29

What was the hardest, like one learning that you heard really hard way? Can be people.

Anjali Sardana 1:06:37

Yeah, it was a people thing. There was someone on the team who I’d hired like decently early on. We had to wait a while for this person to end up joining. And then like another person joined and then there was like a conflict between the two and then the person who I’d hired and end up leaving. And that hit me really, really hard. And I like really, really hard. And honestly, like if they, I think like very often, even today, like I’d love for them to be back on the team. Like it’d be incredible. And I think as a founder, your job is to like assemble like the Avengers, right?

Like you’re assembling an amazing team. And I was very high conviction on this person. I was right about this person being an incredible fit to the team. And then for them to leave was very, very difficult for me. And today I don’t beat myself up about it anymore. I think I have learned that. And the same situation has come up actually several times since. And I think I’ve navigated it very differently as a result of that experience. But even today, I would say I’m still quite sad that it happened. And if that person is watching this, I would love for them to come back.

Nansi Mishra 1:07:46

Thank you so much, Anjali, for this wonderful conversation. I learned a lot. And I feel anyone who would watch this conversation will feel the same. And thank you so much for joining us. We recorded this part two today. Thank you so much for sharing one more day with me. Really grateful for that.

Anjali Sardana 1:08:03

Thank you for having me.

Nansi Mishra 1:08:04

Thank you.