GetaPro helps you to find the best cleaner or plumber

GetaPro, the platform for finding a plumber or any other handyman, has more than 8,200 registered service providers in Latvia and its first 500 registered tradesmen in Estonia. The startup’s goal is to build a pan-Baltic portal, where customers and tradesmen from all three countries can successfully collaborate across borders.

Around 1,000 handymen visit GetaPro daily and 3,000 monthly. This year the volume of customer orders has increased by 80% reaching 200 orders a day. Monthly orders total more than 5,000. “We are running regular interviews with our tradesmen to share their individual success stories in our blog. It is such a pleasure to hear that the GetaPro platform helped many people to build their businesses or grow their customer network,” says Jurijs Fridkins, co-founder of GetaPro.

He and Aleksejs Kalpakovs founded the platform in 2017. 

“This started on the interlink of multiple opportunities that we saw at that moment – on the one hand, we have had years of professional experience from large corporate organizations that we wanted to invest in growing our own company. On the other hand, we saw a clear niche within the services market where it was hard to find trusted service providers. Finally, the whole industry is changing – e-commerce is growing, marketplaces with feedback and rating systems are becoming a trend. The decision was easy – either we build this platform or someone else was going to,” he says, recalling the beginnings.

At the beginning of 2021, GetaPro raised an investment from Latvia’s investment fund Expansion Capital. GetaPro is not disclosing the amount of the investment. “The investor’s interest has remained high this year and we are continuously getting inquiries about a full or partial takeover of the company from major Baltic strategic investors,” claims Fridkins.

Expanding its service towards B2B

“We’ve learned from companies that act as tradesmen that it is hard for them to compete against individual service providers as they need to charge customer VAT on top of their rates. On the other side, we’ve seen a lot of requests from business customers to only receive offers from service providers that act as a company – not private individuals,” says Fridkins.

To support both needs, GetaPro came up with a new service called GetaPro Business. There are already hundreds of registered and verified companies. He says that the team is receiving lots of e-mails from companies and government organizations that are interested in price surveys for project-based construction works. “Normally there are multiple companies copied on the distribution list. This indicates that there is a lot of time and effort being spent organizing and facilitating such price surveys. Tender-based order management is GetaPro Business core service,” adds Fridkins.

GetaPro Business has introduced online payments. The team will extend the online payment solution from GetaPro Business into a standard GetaPro platform to provide customers with an option to pay tradesmen online via GetaPro. “We see this solution as very useful for online services like IT support or lawyer online consultation services,” he says.

Enters the Estonian market

In 2021, GetaPro entered the Estonian market. “We are gradually growing and bringing in around 100 new orders weekly mainly in the field of small home repairs,” says Fridkins.

On the platform, there are around 500 registered tradesmen and the number is growing by 20 to 30 new handymen each week. He tells there are various marketplaces in Estonia at the moment that are at a comparable size with GetaPro, but most of them are focused on App solutions. GetaPro’s approach is more web-based but is also adapted to the mobile view. 

“This helps us grow at a lower spend rate using organic search capabilities. The Estonian portal is still free of charge for tradesmen as we plan to grow and attract new users,” adds Fridkins.

Lithuania will follow soon

The company’s original plan was to launch the GetaPro platform in Lithuania during the first half of 2021, but Fridkins decided to hold off a bit. “We’ve learned from the Estonian launch that it takes a lot of management resources to support local growth. We’ve realized that in order to be successful in the new market, we need to take one step at a time,” he explains.

Right now, GetaPro is planning to enter the Lithuania market at the end of this year or at the beginning of 2022. The company’s final goal is to build a pan-Baltic portal where customers and tradesmen from all three countries can successfully collaborate across borders. 

“The mission is still the same – to build transparent and safe services market in all three countries,” stresses Fridkins.

Source: labsoflatvia.com