StarOfService Secures $10m Investment

By Dipo Olowookere

Europe’s leading marketplace for local services, StarOfService, has successfully raised $10 million in Series A investment.

It follows two previous seed funding rounds worth $2 million in total and will accelerate the French start-up’s ambitious expansion plans to take the global leadership position.

StarOfService, launched in 2013, handles more than two million requests online from customers looking to find local services to meet specific needs, anything from wedding photographers, plumbers, language teachers and DJs, to Pokémon Go ‘masters’ for hire.

The platform generates over €800m in business volume to the service professionals listed on its site – and growing at 400% year-on-year.

The funding round was led by Andrea Piccioni and Silvio Pagliani (co-founders of Real Web SA and of Immobiliare.it – Italy’s largest real estate platform), ENERN Investments and Point Nine Capital, who were joined by a number of angel investors including founders and senior executives from high-profile brands like DocPlanner and eBay.

They join previous investors Klaus Nyengaard, former CEO of JustEat, and BlaBlaCar founders Frédéric Mazzella and Francis Nappez.

Lucas Lambertini, co-founder and CEO of StarOfService, said: “We’re thrilled to have secured the financial backing and support of some of Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs, a team of people who have built global business success stories. We want to create the Uber for local services professionals, and we’re already growing at an exponential rate.

“This investment round will help us accelerate that growth further, to become the global leader in the next couple of years. As part of that ambition, we will be recruiting talent to build a global team that shares our vision and can deliver on that huge opportunity.”

Investors Andrea Piccioni and Silvio Pagliani commented: “StarOfService is a powerful reminder that market-leading innovation is happening right here in Europe, and this startup has the potential to become a huge success story. The team is incredibly ambitious and has already proven an impressive ability to execute on its disruptive vision. We are confident it will muscle its way to becoming a global leader in no time at all, and we strongly feel like we are a great fit for the company.”

StarOfService already has a strong online presence in Italy (www.starofservice.it), Spain (www.starofservice.es), Germany (www.starofservice.de), the UK (www.starofservice.co.uk), Poland (www.starofservice.pl), Australia (www.starofservice.com.au), Canada (www.starofservice.ca), Turkey (www.starofservice.web.tr), Brazil (www.starofservice.com.br), India (www.starofservice.in) and France (www.starofservice.com).