Sheba.xyz: Service at your doorstep 24/7

Fahmida Rahman, a working woman, has dust allergy and she needs things at home to be spic and span, cleaned every day. When her domestic help goes absent without leave, she is in a fix.

On a humid Friday evening, the fan in Abrar Ahmed's drawing room stopped working. He had invited some of his colleagues and their families to celebrate his promotion, but all the electricians he knew refused to come on a holiday.

To offer a solution in situations like this, two upmarket executives left their highly-paid jobs and formed Sheba.xyz in 2016, which is now the largest online service market in the country. And they are already planning to expand the business overseas.

There are more than 2000 service providers working with Sheba today, providing almost all kinds of daily life services, from repairing home appliances to cleaning or shifting houses to providing laundry services, going door to door.

And a user can order the service s/he requires, just by tapping the app or calling the helpline.

Starting their operation with just four people at a Mirpur DOHS office, Sheba.xyz now employs 70 full-time staff in a Gulshan office and they are making it even bigger in the next few months.

In just two years, they have made a name for themselves, becoming a million dollar Bangladeshi start-up along the way.

But what is the formula of this success?

"The rule is the same for everyone. Even we the co-founders have to strictly maintain office timing. The culture of a start-up is different. At the initial stages, we the directors also had to go from door to door. We all shifted to Mirpur DOHS because that's where we started our business. We were very dedicated and we think that took us forward," said Ilmul Haque Sajib, one of the co-founders and COO of Sheba.xyz.

"I wake up early in the morning and come by bus to office by 7 in the morning. When I was working for the big companies I always had my office car, but now I have made this my lifestyle," added Adnan Imtiaz Halim, another co-founder who is now the CEO.

“We have to make a lot of personal sacrifices. We told our family that for three years we will not be able to give them time. Financially we won’t be contributing much either. Luckily, we got fantastic support from our families,” Adnan further said.

The duo, both very humble, earnestly explained that it was not only a matter of making money, but that they also aspired to do something for the society.

"This Eid our rent-a-car service had a 190% rise. A car that takes a group to Chittagong usually charges Tk 10,000. Around Eid, the drivers demand Tk 15,000. We paid the drivers that extra money so that people could still make that journey home at the usual fare," Ilmul said, citing an instance of their efforts to serve the community.

Adnan added, “We do have a round-the-clock helpline. Not many people call us at night, two or three at max, but we still wanted to introduce it. The calls that come at that time of the night are very urgent. We want to help people during their time of need. Or else how can we serve them?”

“There was this girl, a cancer patient, who needed to have her head shaven. And you know in such times, the family does not want to do that outside. We were lucky to get the chance to help them out by sending a beauty service provider to their home,” Ilmul said when he was asked to share a moment that made them happy as a service provider.

The duo mainly runs the show from the front while their chief technology officer Abu Naser Shoaib works from behind, looking after the IT backbone that holds the business together.