From dinner bookings to birthday gifts, AI concierge startups are a new rage for urban Indians

From that elusive dinner booking at a restaurant to last-minute birthday gifts, affluent urban Indians are increasingly leaning on AI concierge apps to manage the mundane but time-consuming tasks of daily life.

A new crop of startups is betting that consumers are willing to pay not only for faster delivery but for freedom from routine tasks. Investors too appear sold by the idea, as a clutch of AI-powered personal assistants are in line to raise funding.

For instance, Hulp, an AI concierge startup founded by former Policybazaar co-founder Tarun Mathur, is in talks to raise $4-6 million (Rs 35-60 crore) in fresh funding, people familiar with the development told Moneycontrol.

“A chunk of the capital will come from Sparrow Capital and DeVC but other investors are likely to join the round as interest in the space picks up,” a person familiar with the developments told Moneycontrol.

Hulp, Sparrow Capital and DeVC did not reply to Moneycontrol’s queries.

This is after M, started by Dunzo co-founder Kabeer Biswas, has raised around $11 million (Rs 102 crore) from Peak XV Partners, Blume Ventures, Cred and others as investors increasingly warm up to concierge-style AI startups, a category many believe could emerge as the next high-growth segment amid the broader boom in AI-powered convenience services.

Nearly a dozen AI concierge apps

Including Hulp and M, there are nearly a dozen AI concierge apps which are being built.

There is Swiggy’s Crew, an early mover in the market. Investors are also tracking companies such as Pokus, Faff, Aviha, Robin Home, Khwaaish, Namak.io, Cookmate, Ask Feedy mushrooming in the AI concierge space, multiple VCs told Moneycontrol.

While most of these companies cater to a similar cohort of users, largely having a household income of Rs 12 lakh per annum or more, there is another set of companies with differentiated offerings.

Firms like Redberyl, Indulge Global, Pinch and others serve a slightly more premium set of users and charge them an annual subscription fee of anywhere between Rs 1 and 5 lakh.

“It's a very large market and there are enough people who are, and will be, ready to pay for convenience. It's a large profit pool and multiple winners should exist,” said Ashish Kumar, co-founder and General Partner, F2A (Fundamentum Frontier Advisors), which recently launched a Rs 2,000 crore AI and deep tech fund.

Despite different focus areas, the collective idea is to widen the total addressable market (TAM).

“Barring the companies that offer a more premium service, largely any user who is willing to pay Rs 2,000-3,000 per month can, and will, be a target group (TG) for these upcoming AI concierge startups,” a Partner at a VC fund, with exposure to the space, told Moneycontrol.

Industry stakeholders estimate there will be a maximum of 40-50 million users, the same ones who purchase on food delivery apps and quick commerce platforms, will be the ones that AI concierge companies will target.

Some of these apps are initially focused on solving a single use case before expanding into other areas. Of those, some platforms are looking to build on top of the existing API infrastructure of quick commerce companies such as Blinkit, Zepto, Instamart, BigBasket and others to automate tasks such as meal planning, grocery ordering and payments with minimal human intervention.

The broader ambition is to eventually expand these capabilities across categories and automate a wide range of repetitive everyday tasks, freeing up more time for users to focus on higher-value work and activities.

An AI concierge founder, while showing a preview of the services to Moneycontrol, said “it’s been about a week since we last spoke to our cook. She dictates voice messages in her native language on WhatsApp, the chatbot responds with a meal plan and ingredients for different members of the family. Think of it as an AI house manager.”

Going forward, there could be integrations where users give mandates for payments. So an AI concierge app will be able to manage the full cycle- from meal planning to ordering and paying for ingredients to coaching the person preparing it in his/her native language.

A section of investors, however, admit that concierge AI startups remain operationally complex businesses with only a limited layer of actual AI and automation today.

While the task is fed to an app, the actual execution still requires humans on the ground. From standing in a queue to score a reservation or a concert ticket to handling the task of putting gifts together and so on.

“Any AI concierge app has to have a deep tech layer to it. We don’t need another Blinkit or a Snabbit – we need a company that can build on top of the existing infrastructure layer. A model with strong voice agents, better workflow automation will be infinitely scalable,” said Rishab Malik, Managing Partner, Jungle Ventures.

As it happens, AI concierge, as an industry, is picking up pace when quick home services startups such as InstaHelp, Snabbit, Pronto are all scaling and even expanding their scope of services.

InstaHelp, Snabbit & Pronto are all fulfilling over 2.5 million monthly bookings and are increasing spends to enter newer categories and tap a larger consumer base.

Since these firms already have a captive base, and access to peoples’ homes, AI-concierge can be a natural extension, some investors argued.

“But that is where the horizontal and the vertical categorisation classification will start happening. It is too premature to predict who will win the market,” Kumar from F2A, said.

“For any of the existing players to become a true AI concierge player, they will have to solve horizontal, which, in my mind, is an extremely complex problem,” he added.

Similarly, companies such as Uber and Walmart-owned Flipkart, could be building such services on top of their existing infrastructure and existing fleet of riders, if they see merit in entering the space, a Partner at a large VC fund said.

“This is a category that is likely to be dominated by Indian founders and companies with deep local knowledge and strong on-the-ground execution. Global players are typically less inclined to navigate India's regulatory complexity, especially when layered on top of already operationally intensive businesses,” the investor cited above said.

Ultimately, the emerging battle around AI concierge may not be decided by who launches first, but by who can build the deepest consumer habit while automating enough of the operational layer to make the model scalable. As convenience becomes increasingly intertwined with AI, investors are betting that the next wave of consumer startups could be built not just around delivering products faster, but around eliminating the need for users to think about everyday tasks altogether.

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