If you’ve ever been looking for a craftsman, you know it may take longer than you need. In the conservative field of heating, this is trying to change the Czech startup Topíte.cz, combining craft with the user experience we are used to from e-shops and digital services.
Less than two years old company has just received an investment of 20 million crowns, which was equally shared by the renowned European fund Enern with Presto Ventures (formerly Bohemia Venture Capital). Fresh capital will serve primarily to strengthen the position in Moravia and to develop a mobile application.
“In the long term, we invest in companies that improve customer experience in industries where modern services do not yet work. Moreover, Topíte.cz comes with a solution that will be applied to other crafts and markets, therefore we have supported them from the very beginning, ”says Tomáš Obrtáč, partner of Enern.
It alludes to the fact that as natural persons, other fund partners, including Tomáš Čupro or Petr Šmída, have already invested in the project before.
“We have recently tested on a sample of 163 Czech registered companies and sole traders across the country how affordable the services of heating engineers are. Only 15 percent of respondents said they were interested in the contract or had the capacity to execute it. Not to mention the level of communication, which was in many cases confusing and completely inadequate”, says Daniel Helcl, the co-founder and CEO of the project.
Helcl believes that it can largely solve this problem. Topíte.cz has in its platform craftsmen who have a standard backoffice and do not have to worry about communication with clients, order management or accounting. The client then resolves all inquiries through an online interface, where the response is almost instantaneous.
The proposition of the heating startup also attracted Přemysl Rubeš, the founder and head of the Presto Ventures fund, which primarily contains the money of billionaire Tomáš Krsk. “We have known for a long time about the necessity of such a service in the Central European market – for example, there is the German Thermondo in Western Europe – and we are glad that at Topíte.cz we have finally found a team that has all the prerequisites to succeed here and money, time and energy”, says Rubeš.
Helcl would like to lead Topíte.cz to neighboring markets, namely Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. Last year the company carried out 70 orders in “pilot operation” and received over seven million crowns. There are hundreds of orders this year, sales have doubled.
Also published on Medium.