A 20-minute pitch wins Indian startup Pronto backing from Lachy Groom
Key takeaways
- Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley s most closely watched solo investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes into his first meeting with its 24-year-old founder.
- The deal came together within weeks, bringing the solo investor on board as the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet growing demand for on-demand home services in India.
- Groom said he was drawn to Pronto s ambition to build what he called the world s largest platform for organizing domestic labor, starting with India s vast and largely unstructured workforce.
Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley s most closely watched solo investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes into his first meeting with its 24-year-old founder.
The meeting, which took place in February through a mutual connection, led to Groom investing $20 million in Pronto as an extension of its Series B round, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment — double its valuation just over two months earlier, as Tech Crunch had previously reported. The deal came together within weeks, bringing the solo investor on board as the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet growing demand for on-demand home services in India.
Groom said he was drawn to Pronto s ambition to build what he called the world s largest platform for organizing domestic labor, starting with India s vast and largely unstructured workforce. The work underneath that is genuinely hard, and most attempts in adjacent categories have struggled with the operational discipline, he said, adding that Pronto founder Anjali Sardana (pictured above) and her team were operating at a level I haven t seen elsewhere in this space.