The 10-Minute Disruptor

India’s consumer internet has already compressed time—from next-day delivery to 10-minute groceries. Now, Aayush Agarwal wants to bring that same urgency inside the home.

With Snabbit, the former Zepto Chief of Staff is building what could become the next frontier of hyperlocal commerce: on-demand home services delivered in minutes, not hours. And if his bet plays out, it could unlock one of the most elusive categories in Indian tech.

“For me, the question was simple,” Agarwal says. “In a world where everything is available in a couple of taps, why is getting help at home still such an unimaginable task?” The idea may sound obvious—but that’s precisely why it has been so hard to crack. For years, startups have attempted to digitise high-frequency home services—cleaning, cooking, household help—only to struggle with scale, reliability, and unit economics.

Snabbit is approaching the problem differently. Its core insight isn’t speed for the sake of it, but efficiency.

“The reason we are quick is because it unlocks a flywheel where every stakeholder benefits,” Agarwal explains. “When you move from a 30-minute to a 10-minute model, you free up time that was earlier unmonetised—experts can do more jobs, the marketplace becomes more efficient, and profitability improves.”

In other words, speed isn’t a feature—it’s the business model.

That thinking has helped Snabbit scale at a pace few expected. From just a handful of daily jobs in early 2024, the platform has surged to tens of thousands, with ambitions to grow from one million monthly jobs to one million daily jobs.

Backing that growth is capital—and conviction. The company has raised over $112 million in under two years, despite early skepticism from investors who doubted whether the category could be digitised at all. “The conventional wisdom was that this wouldn’t work,” Agarwal admits. “Investors were betting more on the team than the category itself.”

That skepticism forced Snabbit into a year of intense iteration. The company pivoted repeatedly, staying tightly focused on micro-markets until it found product-market fit. The lesson was clear: depth before breadth. “We spent the first year cracking density in a few micro-markets instead of expanding everywhere,” he says. “That’s why we’re now leaders in the markets we operate in.”

That discipline extends to how the company thinks about growth and profitability. Unlike many scale-first startups, Snabbit is building with a sharp eye on unit economics.

“Our P&L has only improved with scale,” Agarwal notes. “Burn per job has reduced significantly even as we’ve grown 10x in a few months.” The capital, he adds, is less about chasing growth at any cost and more about building a long-term advantage—strengthening the balance sheet, deepening existing markets, and selectively expanding into adjacent categories.

Competition, of course, is intensifying. Established players like Urban Company and newer entrants are circling the same opportunity. But Agarwal believes the real moat lies not in strategy—which can be copied—but in execution. “In categories like this, every good decision eventually gets replicated,” he says. “Your real moat is the quality of your team and how well you execute.”

That execution hinges on two moving parts: talent and playbooks. With a 250-member team and over 15,000 service professionals, Snabbit is scaling both simultaneously—while constantly rewriting its operating model. “What worked for the first 100 users doesn’t work for the next 10,000,” Agarwal says. “You have to keep evolving the playbook.”

The road ahead is far from frictionless. Workforce availability, seasonal demand spikes, and operational complexity remain persistent challenges. But Agarwal sees these not as barriers, but as characteristics of the category itself—ones that can be understood, predicted, and eventually optimised.

For now, Snabbit’s focus remains clear: go deeper, not wider. “We’re not thinking city expansion immediately,” he says. “We want to build density and depth in the markets we already operate in.”

Because if hyperlocal services are indeed the next big consumer internet unlock, the winners won’t just be the fastest—they’ll be the ones who make speed sustainable. And in that race, Snabbit is moving with intent.