Pronto Founder and CEO Anjali Sardana says that in the offline world, house-help often encounter abuse or disrespect and have little power to walk away because their income and reputation depend on pleasing employers who hold more social capital.

At 23, Pronto Founder and CEO Anjali Sardana is attempting to formalise one of India’s most unstructured and invisible workforces - domestic workers. In just seven months of going live, Pronto has scaled a 10-minute home services model across key urban markets, clocking seven-figure revenue while raising a total of $13 million across a seed and Series A round, including a $11 million Series A closed within months of launch.

In a YouTube interview with Humans of Bombay, Sardana opened up about her vision and journey of building Pronto from scratch. For Sardana, the core disruption is not 10-minute fulfilment but giving domestic workers formal identity, agency and protection in a market that usually treats them as informal, interchangeable 'help'. She

Pronto trains workers that if they feel unsafe or disrespected in a home, they should leave immediately and report to the company, which commits to “having their back” — a first for many who previously had no institutional support. Sardana believes that being part of a formal platform, with a recognised brand behind them, adds dignity and meaning to their work and makes them feel like part of the core team rather than disposable gig labour. You can watch the full interview below:

Operational in Delhi-NCR (Delhi, Gurugram, Noida), Mumbai Pune, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru, Pronto promises sweeping, mopping, utensil cleaning and other household services at the tap of an app, typically within a 10-minute radius of its hubs. Its most used services are sweeping, mopping and utensils, which together account for roughly half of revenue, reflecting that many customers now treat Pronto as primary house help rather than a fallback when regular staff take leave.

How did Sardana establish Pronto?

Sardana first conceived Pronto while in her final year of college, then moved to San Francisco for what she calls her 'dream' early-stage venture capital internship, only to find herself in 'mental pain' at not building the product she believed India needed. She describes being unable to sleep or eat because she felt every hour spent in VC was misallocated when she could be working on Pronto, a level of obsession that eventually pushed her to leave the US and relocate to India to build full-time after graduating in May 2024.

Her starting hypothesis was that India’s house-help crisis was a supply shortage, but field surveys with domestic workers revealed the opposite. Many were underemployed for months and faced severe income instability despite high unmet demand in urban homes. That insight led her away from the standard 'Uber for X' playbook; she concluded that the real constraints were quality, safety and reliability, and that an unmanaged marketplace would not solve for these, especially in a category where workers are often disrespected and lack agency.

Seven months, seven-figure revenue

Pronto has been live for only seven months and already reports seven-figure revenue, powered largely by repeat usage from customers who book daily or even multiple times a day. Some households use the service for utensils after every meal, while others have replaced traditional offline house help entirely, relying on Pronto for their recurring cleaning needs.

On the capital side, Sardana first raised a $2 million seed round in early February, followed by an $11 million Series A for which the term sheet was signed in the first week of May, with restructuring and formal close taking place thereafter. She notes that both rounds were led by global, largely US-based investors and stresses that at the early stage, investors primarily underwrite the founder rather than the specific idea or deck, expecting business models and even markets to evolve.

How the 10-minute model actually works

Unlike quick commerce 'dark stores' stocking goods, Pronto runs asset-light hubs that function as micro-bases for its workforce. These hubs are small rooms equipped with basics such as water, toilets and first aid, strategically placed so that workers can reach customers’ homes within roughly 10 minutes while keeping fixed costs low.

The company 'owns' the labour supply chain end-to-end. An in-house team recruits workers, trainers perform one-on-one screenings for behaviour, physical readiness and intent, and successful candidates undergo a five-day training programme covering hard cleaning skills, soft skills like communication and politeness, grooming and hygiene, basic tech literacy and Pronto’s platform rules. Pricing is either time-based or service-based, but both models work out to around Rs. 250 per hour for the consumer.

Pronto is 230 employees strong

Today Pronto has a corporate team of about 230 employees, most of whom are older than Sardana, and works with over 1,000 service professionals on the ground. She says she has not faced age-related disrespect internally, arguing that anyone uncomfortable reporting to a 23-year-old founder simply self-selects out of the hiring process.

Her own routine involves constant travel between hubs across cities, often having breakfast in Mumbai, lunch in Gurugram and dinner in Bengaluru on the same day, with significant time spent in non-air-conditioned hub spaces to stay close to the realities workers face. She often shadows workers on live bookings, tracking journeys down to seconds to understand where time is lost and how to protect the 10-minute promise without compromising worker conditions.

What does Pronto plan to do in the near future

Looking ahead, Pronto is expanding deeper into existing cities while also launching in new markets such as Hyderabad and Pune. Parallelly, the startup is experimenting with adjacent home service categories, with pet care — including high-priced dog walking in Mumbai — emerging as a promising line that fits its unit economics and operational framework.

Sardana frames Pronto as a 'win–win–win' business where customers get reliable services, workers gain income stability and dignity, and shareholders benefit from a large, previously inefficient market being organised. The bigger challenge, she admits, is changing societal attitudes in a country where domestic work has long been undervalued, but she sees it as a moral responsibility integral to the company’s mission, not a side project.