Berlin, November 11th, 2021: The Helpling Group today announced the takeover of the housekeeping company Call-Jeffrey and Raffles (targets). Both targets are now part of the Berlin-based start-up Helpling, which further consolidates its position as Europe and Asia’s leading platform for household services. Additional acquisitions are planned.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the Helpling Group has grown rapidly in recent years. In addition to the continuous organic growth of the existing businesses, the Helpling Group has been consolidating the European market through numerous takeovers. After taking over Tiger Facility Services at the end of 2019, the group has been actively looking for acquisition targets in the consumer business sector. Since the middle of this year, founder Philip Huffmann and his team have been focusing on expanding the premium segment for private households with Helpling Premium. The acquisition of Call-Jeffrey and Raffles will further support the Helpling Premium development, with which the group intends to expedite its growth in the next few years.
Helpling founder and group CEO, Philip Huffmann, says: “The founding team behind Call-Jeffrey and Raffles has done an impressive job to date and I am delighted to add another strong brand to our B2C area. For now we would like to continue the Call-Jeffrey business as before and also develop new products together.”
Vincent Bobinski, Founder of Call-Jeffrey says: “After the successful – but also challenging – founding of our company, we are pleased that Call-Jeffrey is now part of the Helpling Group.”
“Embedding our product in the Helpling platform naturally offers a great opportunity! As part of the Helpling Group, the product-market fit can still be improved and so Call-Jeffrey can reach more and more customers ”, adds his co-founder Gabriel Bobinski.
Call-Jeffrey was founded in 2016 and currently has a team of 180 employees, including permanent housekeepers. In addition to the thousands of self-employed cleaning staff on the Helpling platform, Helpling Premium now also places orders with smaller agencies where cleaning staff are permanently employed.
Shining Yeo, founder of Raffles says: “Pivoting the business during the pandemic was extremely challenging. We spent tremendous amounts of hours to upskill our staff, and try to find new revenue streams for the company. I wanted to make sure all my staff were able to put food on the table when hotels, airports, and restaurants were closed. We are excited to join the Helpling group, I have no doubt their technology and operational excellence will strengthen our growth.”
Raffles Facility Management was founded in 2019 in the middle of the pandemic and currently has 60 employees. In addition to focusing on upskilling ex-hotel housekeepers, ex-F&B service staff and ex-hospitality workers to become premium home service managers, Raffles aims to be the gold standard of employee benefits in the household services industry in Singapore. They are expected to hire 1000 Singaporeans/PR to join the premium home service managers program by December 2022.
For Helpling, the takeover is the eighth and ninth acquisition since the company was founded in 2014. “The capital from our latest financing round is to be increasingly used for acquisitions in order to consolidate our position as market leader in the Europe and Asia market”, says Helpling founder Philip Huffmann.
About The Helpling Group
In addition to Helpling, Europe and Asia’s leading marketplace for household services, the Helpling Group brings together other brands in the service sector for private households and companies under one roof, such as Helpling Premium, Household Genie, MySkills Academy, Tiger Facility Services and goodworkvibes. The Helpling Group is active with various brands in 10 markets around the world, with the vision to deliver quality living at our customers’ fingertips. Millions of households around the world use the products, services and Helpling Group’s platforms every day. Helpling’s main Investors include Mangrove Capital, Lakestar, APACIG, Rocket Internet, and Unilever Ventures.
