Lithuanian startup GETFIX was one of those startups that were launched and managed to grow during the pandemic. GETFIX platform is intended for those who are looking for service providers who can do plumbing, electrical works, interior decoration, furniture assembly, or other household work. Currently, it unites more than 460 service providers.

🚀 Read our Startup Of The Week – GETFIX story and find out what challenges did they face while launching this platform:

Tell us about your startup. What is GETFIX? And how does it work?

To bet short, GETFIX is a marketplace to get a service provider in a fast and easy way just in few clicks. Our platform works like UBER – as you post a task, service providers get that information and ones, who can perform it, accepts the task.

What are your competitive advantages that work? What are your competitors?

Our competitive advantage is our aim to get one step closer to our customers. Our vision is that customers could order a handyman in the easiest possible way. That’s why we have partnerships with leading retailers and e-shops. We also have developed solutions for e-shops and retail stores, that customer could order service provider same time as he buys a product.

We have few competitors in the market, but our main competitors are ads-based businesses, which work in a classical way.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

We both saw that there is a huge problem to get a handyman for small or medium tasks. In this market economy, it is really easy to get any product you want, but why it is so hard to order a reliable plumber? That’s why we saw it as a really great opportunity to deliver an IT solution to it, because of growing demand and changing customer behavior.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

We have started this project at the beginning of 2020.

The main challenge was to onboard service providers to our platform, because most of them were used to work in a classical way. It really took a lot of time to convince them, that this solution will allow them to save time and to have higher earnings.

Another challenge was quarantine. As we launched MVP, a few months later quarantine was announced and it resulted in a great decline of orders, but it was really great opportunity to onboard great numbers of service providers.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography? Do you have some already?

From collected data, we have defined our customers to be busy young workers, single women, seniors. Customers are based in cities, where we are operating: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai.

What are the biggest challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming it?

In this really hot real estate market our biggest challenge is to get a great number of service providers on our platform. As a marketplace, we have to match both sides. As we have an increasing flow of orders, we also have to follow up with a number of service providers.

To get service providers onboard, our focus right now is to create more value for them, not just by providing orders, but also by providing a tool for their daily tasks.

Tell us more about funding. How did you get it? Do you seek extra funding?

We have received our first investment after pitching at the LitBAN event. We have two angel investors from LitBAN and one is from the side, who contacted us via Linkedin.

At this stage, we are also looking for additional funding, because we see that it takes a lot of time to close an investment round. Also, with the attracted new investment, we could use open opportunities in the market.

Please introduce your team!

We are two founders. Benas has over 12 years of experience in developing service-based businesses. Have launched few companies in this market, who successfully work to this day.

Emilis strength is in e-commerce and in IT project management. He has over 8 years’ experience in this market. Have launched and been a part of few companies in e-commerce.

We are operating GETFIX from co-working space Spiečius in Šiauliai, our home city.

Strong startup culture isn’t something that can be created overnight but it can be worked towards with some conscious moves. So what are your moves towards this?

True. In our opinion, a huge mistake is to think just about money. You can find many ways to earn a high salary. Startup people think about changing the world. That’s why our aim is to create more value our both sides of the platform and to get GETFIX on their top of mind.

Also, we have really great relationships with other Lithuanian startups, who could we ask for advice. This is also one of the biggest advantages of the Lithuanian startup ecosystem because most of them are really ready to help and share their insights.

Bonus question: what’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

Our future plan is to become leaders in CEE in this service market. To do that, Lithuania is a really great place to test ideas and hypotheses, what works and what doesn’t, before moving our solution abroad.

We wish the very best of luck with their future plans, thanks for sharing your story, GETFIX!