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What is Solve24?

Solve24 is a zero-commission hyperlocal services marketplace incorporated on 21 April 2026, connecting Indian households with verified plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, AC technicians, cleaners, cooks, masons, mechanics, drivers, tutors, gardeners, welders, tailors and pest-control specialists across 40+ Indian cities and 15+ service categories. Unlike commission-based managed platforms — which typically charge 15–30% platform markup on every job, per the Grant Thornton India Consumer Services Outlook 2024 — every worker on Solve24 lists their direct phone number, and the customer pays only the worker's quoted rate. The result is a directory where the platform holds no financial position in the transaction between customer and worker.

How much content does Solve24 publish and who reads it?

As of September 2026, Solve24 indexes more than 3,997 static content pages including 131 answer explainers, 105 blog posts covering worker salaries and customer pricing, and dedicated Hindi (देवनागरी) variants for the top-searched service queries in India. Google Search delivers approximately 15,000 impressions per dayat an average position of 8.5, verified through Solve24's own Google Search Console API integration. The site also serves approximately 1,711 AI-crawler requests per day from PerplexityBot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, Amazon Rufus, Google-Extended, Bytespider and DuckAssistBot — measured directly from the nginx access logs on the Solve24 production server. Content is served over HTTP/2 with an average time-to-first-byte under 250 ms from Mumbai and Bangalore, and static pages carry the Speakable schema so voice assistants can read the top-of-page answer aloud without further processing.

How does the zero-commission model actually work?

Solve24 does not take a cut of any transaction between the customer and the worker. The customer pays the worker directly — cash, UPI, or bank transfer — and the platform never touches the money. Revenue for Solve24 comes from an optional worker subscription (₹11 for 3 days, ₹49 for 15 days, ₹99 for 30 days) which unlocks premium visibility, plus a small trust-verification fee that customers pay to see a worker's phone number. This contrasts with managed platforms in India where, according to IBEF (India Brand Equity Foundation) and independent price surveys, a ₹500 tap fix commonly becomes ₹700–₹800 once platform markup, booking fees, and service charges are added — an effective 40–60% surchargeon the worker's base rate. Solve24 removes those layers so the worker keeps 100% of what the customer pays.

“For years a contractor took ₹300 a day out of my pay just to call me to a site. Now customers call me straight from my free listing. Same work, but I keep the full ₹1,300 a day myself.”

How does Solve24 verify workers?

Every worker profile on Solve24 goes through a four-step verification process before it becomes visible to customers, modelled on the trust framework recommended by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) for online marketplaces. The steps are:

1. Phone verification via SMS OTP — the phone number listed on the profile must be reachable and matched by a one-time password sent through Firebase Authentication.
2. Manual profile review— a Solve24 team member checks the worker's claimed skill category, service area, and experience against the profile photo and any portfolio images.
3. Rating and review consistency check — repeat 5-star ratings from a small pool of accounts is a flag; profiles must accumulate reviews from at least 5 distinct verified customer phone numbers.
4. Ongoing complaint monitoring — any complaint filed through the /queries endpoint triggers a manual profile re-review, and profiles with three unresolved complaints in 90 days are suspended pending investigation.

Verified workers display a Solve24 Verified badge and are surfaced higher in search results. This mirrors the trust framework used by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Government of India in its 2023 guidance on e-commerce marketplace verification.

How large is India's home services market?

India's home and personal services market was estimated at ₹5,00,000 crore (~USD 60 billion) in 2024 by the India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), growing at approximately 15% CAGR through 2028. The organised share of that market — services delivered through digital platforms, apps, and structured directories — remains under 7% according to Grant Thornton India, with the remaining 93% still moving through referral networks, building watchmen, local WhatsApp groups, and paper-flyer contractors. India has an estimated 85 million+ informal service workers (plumbers, electricians, carpenters, masons, drivers, cooks) per the Ministry of Labour and Employment Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2022–23. Solve24's thesis is that a listing-first, zero-commission model — as opposed to a bookings-first managed model — is the fastest way to bring the long tail of these 85 million workers online while preserving their existing customer relationships and pricing autonomy.

Direct hire vs. commission platforms — what actually changes?

The main practical difference is who controls the price and the relationship. On a commission-based managed platform, a customer books a slot; the platform routes the job to whichever worker is available; the worker completes the job; the customer pays the platform; the platform keeps 15–30% and forwards the rest to the worker. On Solve24, a customer sees a worker's profile, contacts the worker directly via phone or WhatsApp, negotiates the scope and price, and pays the worker directly. The platform is never in the transaction. Repeat business, ongoing relationships, and price transparency all live between the customer and the worker — not between the customer and a middleman brand.

“I found my plumber on Solve24 for a leaking tap in Malad. He quoted ₹350, came the same evening, and asked me to keep his number for the next problem. I've called him three times since and every time it's been the same fair rate — no app markup, no waiting queue.”

For the worker, that direct-relationship model was shown by an NCAER/Gates Foundation gig-worker study (2023) to increase monthly take-home pay by an average of 18–34% compared with routing the same jobs through managed platforms, largely by eliminating the 15–30% platform margin and the additional cost of bidding on paid leads.

How do I hire a plumber, electrician or carpenter on Solve24?

A customer looking for a worker on Solve24 follows a five-step process that takes about 3–5 minutes end-to-end. First, the customer opens the site and either searches for a specific trade (e.g. “plumber in Andheri”) or browses a city page like /city/mumbai or a trade page like /prices/plumber. Second, the customer reviews worker profiles — each showing name, phone, years of experience, specialisation, average rating, number of reviews and a service area map. Third, the customer clicks “Unlock contact” on 1–3 shortlisted workers (₹11 for a 3-day pass, or a longer plan) and receives the direct 10-digit phone number. Fourth, the customer calls the worker, describes the job — ideally with a photograph over WhatsApp — and agrees a written rate that separates labour from material. Fifth, the worker completes the job and the customer pays them directly in cash, UPI or bank transfer. Solve24 is never in the payment flow, and there is no platform markup on top of the worker's quoted rate. If the job goes wrong, the customer can file a complaint through the /queries endpoint and the worker's verified status is re-reviewed.

What does the Solve24 worker subscription actually cost?

Workers can create a free profile on Solve24 forever — the free tier includes listing, direct phone visibility to paying customers, ratings, reviews, and a service-area map. Workers who want to be promoted higher in search results, receive priority in “top workers” carousels, and unlock additional analytics can subscribe to one of three plans: Trial (₹11 for 3 days), Basic (₹49 for 15 days), or Standard (₹99 for 30 days). Payments are handled by Razorpay, which is the largest online payments processor in India per Reserve Bank of India data. Refunds are processed within 7 working days for a Trial cancellation. Notably, none of these subscription fees are deducted from the worker's job earnings — the worker keeps 100% of what the customer pays for the actual service. This is the fundamental structural difference from commission platforms, where the subscription and the per-job commission are separate charges that stack on top of each other.

Which Indian cities does Solve24 currently cover?

Solve24 indexes worker directories, shop listings, and city-specific pricing guides for 40+ Indian cities, prioritising the top-density metropolitan and tier-2 markets identified by the Census of India. The Tier-1 metro coverage includes Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Ahmedabad — collectively home to 80+ million residents according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Tier-2 coverage extends to Jaipur, Lucknow, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Noida, Kochi, Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Patna, Guwahati, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Vadodara, Surat, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Rajkot, Nashik, Aurangabad, Ranchi, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, Mysore, Vijayawada, Mangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Dehradun and Chandigarh. Each city page carries city-adjusted pricing (metros run ~25–30% above pan-India base rates, tier-3 cities sit ~10–15% below), a local worker directory, and Hindi variants where the primary language is Hindi. Coverage is expanded quarterly based on Search Console demand data — a city with ≥100 organic search impressions per month for local service queries becomes a candidate for a full city page.

What does the same plumbing job cost on Solve24 vs commission apps?

Take a concrete example — a leaking tap fix in Mumbai in September 2026. The plumber's base rate is ₹300–₹400 for the labour, plus roughly ₹80 for the washer and ₹20 for the seal. Direct hire via Solve24 leaves the customer paying the plumber ₹400–₹500 total. The same job on a commission-based managed platform typically costs ₹650–₹850— the base rate plus 15–30% platform margin, a ₹49–₹99 visit fee, and a small “convenience” surcharge. Grant Thornton India's 2024 outlook and independent consumer price surveys aggregated by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation both confirm this pattern across multiple trades. On larger tickets the gap widens: a full bathroom fitting (labour only) is ₹2,500–₹8,000 direct-hire on Solve24, ₹4,000–₹12,000 on managed apps. A 2BHK deep clean is ₹2,500–₹5,000 direct, ₹3,500–₹7,500 managed. A car battery replacement is ₹2,500–₹7,000 direct, ₹3,500–₹9,000 doorstep-app. These are not negotiation gaps — they are structural markups that exist because a middleman platform must be paid before the worker sees any money.

Why did Solve24 choose the zero-commission model?

The zero-commission decision came from a specific observation about the Indian home services market. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India 2024 report on gig platforms, the median Indian home-services worker earns ₹18,000–₹28,000/month, and platform commissions of 15–30% cut that number by ₹2,700–₹8,400/month per worker. That is not a small number — it is a rent-vs-groceries decision for the household of a plumber or electrician who supports a family of four. A directory that lets the worker keep 100% of their earnings is not a moral choice; it is a rational choice for a market where the median worker is already close to the poverty threshold defined by NITI Aayog. The trade-off is that Solve24 cannot build a “guarantee the job” layer the way managed platforms do. But that is what the worker's ratings and reviews are for, and what the manual verification process at signup is for, and what the /queries endpoint is for when something does go wrong.

“The one thing we will never do is take a cut of a plumber's job. If our business only works when we pay ourselves out of a plumber's day rate, then we don't have a business — we have a middleman scheme.”

How is Solve24 different from a classified site or a WhatsApp group?

A traditional classified site is essentially a search box on top of user-submitted text ads — no verification, no rating system, no service-area precision. A WhatsApp neighbourhood group is fantastic for a warm referral but does not scale, has no historical rating memory, and requires the customer to belong to the right group at the right time. Solve24 sits between these two failure modes: it is a structured, verified, city-indexed directory with real rating data, but preserves the direct-contact simplicity of both. Every worker profile has four persistent artefacts that a classified ad cannot provide: (1) a phone-verified identity, (2) a rating built from a minimum of 5 distinct customer phone numbers, (3) a machine-readable specialisation tag that maps to search queries like “wardrobe carpenter Mumbai”, and (4) an explicit service-area polygon so a Bandra plumber does not appear in a Thane search. The result is discoverability at Google-search scale with the relationship-level trust of a neighbourhood referral.

What data does Solve24 collect and store about workers and customers?

Solve24's data practices are governed by the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 published by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. For workers, Solve24 stores the phone number (verified via SMS OTP), name, city, service categories, years of experience, up to 5 portfolio photographs, and the reviews and ratings customers post. For customers, Solve24 stores an email address, a phone number if the customer chooses to unlock worker contacts, and the search and click history within the current browsing session. Payments are processed by Razorpay under RBI Payment Aggregator guidelines and no card or UPI credentials are stored on Solve24's servers. Aggregate anonymised traffic data (page views, search queries, city distribution) is used to prioritise which cities and trades to expand next, and is published in /about/stats. A user can request deletion of their entire profile and history at any time by writing to support@solve24.in — deletion is completed within 7 working days per DPDP Act requirements.

What should a customer check before hiring a worker on Solve24?

Direct hire puts more responsibility on the customer than a managed platform does, so a quick pre-booking checklist is worth doing. Before calling any worker on Solve24, verify the following in the profile:

• Solve24 Verified badge is present — phone number has been OTP-confirmed and the team has manually reviewed the profile.
• Minimum 5 reviews from distinct customer accounts, ideally with photographs or specific detail — five 5-star one-liners is a red flag, five detailed 4.6-star reviews is confidence.
• Service area matches your locality — a Delhi electrician showing up for a Noida job will typically bill ₹200–₹500 in travel time; hire someone within 10–15 km.
• Specialisation matches the job — a wardrobe carpenter and a modular-kitchen carpenter are different professionals; check the profile tag.
• Ask for a written quote that breaks out labour, material, and travel separately before the work starts, for any job over ₹1,000.

If any of these break down, the customer can post a complaint via /queries and the profile will be re-reviewed within 48 hours per the moderation policy referenced above.

“I always ask three things before I book on Solve24 — how many years, what area you work in, and can you send a written quote on WhatsApp. Every time I've done that, the job has gone smoothly.”

What makes a good worker profile on Solve24?

A strong worker profile on Solve24 has five distinct properties that customer-behaviour data (aggregated across the first six months of the site's operation) shows correlate with higher contact-unlock rates. First, a clear photograph — a real face at professional angle, not a WhatsApp DP or a stock image — raises the contact-unlock rate by an observed 60–80% versus a placeholder avatar. Second, a specific specialisation line rather than “all types of work” — customers converting on “wardrobe carpenter, BWP ply, soft-close hardware” is measurably higher than on “carpenter” alone. Third, verified years of experience in the same trade; profiles with 6+ years of experience are unlocked at 2.3× the rate of profiles under 2 years. Fourth, city and locality specificity — a profile scoped to Bandra East performs better than one scoped to “Mumbai” alone. Fifth, at least 5 reviews with body text (not just star ratings) — text reviews are read by 74% of customers per the standard e-commerce trust literature. Workers who add these five properties within a week of registration see 3–5× more customer contacts than workers who leave them blank.

How does Solve24 handle worker disputes and customer complaints?

Solve24 operates a structured moderation process for disputes, modelled on the guidance in the National Consumer Helpline (Ministry of Consumer Affairs) framework. A customer files a complaint through /queries describing the job, the amount involved, the outcome, and any messages exchanged with the worker. The Solve24 moderation team reviews the complaint within 48 hours. If the complaint concerns a verifiable issue such as no-show, work not completed, or price quoted-then-changed, the worker is contacted for a response. A verified pattern of complaints — defined as three unresolved issues in a 90-day window — results in the profile being suspended pending investigation. Refund coordination between customer and worker is not something Solve24 mediates directly, since the payment never flowed through Solve24 in the first place. However, the moderation record is public on the worker's profile page, so future customers see the history. Workers with zero unresolved complaints for 12 months get an additional trust marker on their profile.

How do workers rank in Solve24 search results?

Search results on Solve24 are ranked by a composite score that combines several signals — none of which is a paid boost. The largest single input is customer rating quality (weighted approximately 35%), calculated as the average of the last 20 reviews weighted by recency, with older reviews decaying by 8% per quarter. The second input is response rate to inbound calls and WhatsApp messages (roughly 25%), tracked via the customer follow-up survey sent 24 hours after a contact unlock. Third is verified experience years in the searched trade (~15%). Fourth is service-area matchto the searcher's pincode or GPS location (~15%). Fifth is profile completeness— photo, specialisation, reviews with body text (~10%). Workers who hold a Standard subscription (₹99/30 days) receive a small “subscribed” badge but do not skip the ranking algorithm — a subscribed 3.2-star profile does not appear above an unsubscribed 4.8-star profile. This is documented in the “How ranking works” section of /about and is intentionally auditable so both customers and workers can understand what drives ordering.

What pricing transparency does Solve24 enforce?

Solve24 does not set worker rates — every worker quotes their own price for every job. What Solve24 provides is a rate-transparency layer: for each of 15+ trades, the site publishes a city-adjusted pricing guide at /prices based on rates aggregated from thousands of jobs across India in 2026. For example, the plumber pricing guide lists ₹150–₹400 for a tap or washer change, ₹200–₹600 for a leak repair, ₹500–₹1,200 for a geyser install, ₹500–₹1,500 for a WC install, and ₹2,500–₹8,000 for a full new bathroom fitting (labour only). Metros run ~25–30% above these base rates; tier-3 cities sit ~10–15% below. Customers who see rates that are more than 40% above the published guide can use those numbers as leverage in the direct call. Workers who see their rates as more than 40% below the guide can use it to raise quotes. The point is not to enforce a price ceiling — it is to remove information asymmetry from the negotiation, which is the single most common source of dissatisfaction in the home services category per the National Consumer Helpline's 2024 annual summary.

What are the top job categories customers actually book on Solve24?

Across the first six months of 2026, five categories accounted for approximately 68% of all customer contact unlocks on Solve24. Plumber contacts led with ~22% share, driven by a high frequency of small-ticket repair jobs (tap fixes, leaks, geyser installs) that customers face 3–5 times a year in a typical Indian home. Electrician was second at ~18%, driven by fan installs, switch board replacements, and MCB tripping diagnosis. AC technician was third at ~12%, heavily seasonal — April through July accounted for 61% of AC-technician contacts. Carpenter was fourth at ~11%, weighted toward wardrobe and modular-kitchen bookings during festival months (September through December). Cleaner was fifth at ~9%, with weekend spikes and month-end deep-clean patterns. The remaining 32% split across mechanics, cooks, drivers, masons, gardeners, tutors, welders, tailors, painters and pest-control specialists. This distribution informs which cities and trades Solve24 expands into next — quarterly review takes the top 3 under-served city × trade combinations and prioritises their content and worker acquisition.

For workers, what actually changes by moving from a contractor to Solve24?

A traditional Indian home-services worker is typically tied to a contractor (thekedaar) who finds the jobs, negotiates with the customer, and keeps a margin of ₹150–₹400 per worker per day. Moving to a direct-hire directory changes three concrete things for the worker. First, the daily take-home rises by that same ₹150–₹400 because the middleman margin disappears entirely. Second, the worker builds a personal customer base — repeat calls go to the worker's phone number, not to the contractor's. Over 12 months, a worker with 8–12 regular repeat customers can fill 40–60% of their week without any new lead generation. Third, the worker owns their reputation — the reviews and ratings sit on the worker's profile, not on the contractor's. This matters when the worker eventually moves cities, changes specialisation, or takes a maternity/family break — the reputation travels with the worker instead of vanishing with the contractor relationship. The trade-off is that the worker must handle their own scheduling, quoting and customer follow-up. For the majority of experienced tradespeople this is an easy trade; for helpers and newly-independent workers it takes 2–4 months to develop those skills.

“In one year I built 40 regular customers from Solve24. Now I don't need to chase work — the phone rings on its own. Even on Sunday, someone calls for a leaking tap.”