Watch: New Home Cleaning Business And Five-A-Side Gamification App Score Big On Shark Tank Malta
Two deals were made on episode five of Shark Tank Malta earlier this week, as the sharks funded a pair of tech-based businesses aiming to solve very different problems in the home cleaning and sports industries, respectively.
The first of these be funded was Salomé Bucher’s Handing Up – a business created to connect consumers with peer-reviewed cleaners without charging a commission.
“It is 2023 and finding a reliable, quality cleaner is still a challenge. Handing Up is here to help customers find the best freelance cleaners in the country,” said Bucher.
“Customers are going to informal marketplaces like Facebook in droves. One single cleaner Facebook group in Malta has 55,000 members. Every day, customers are there trying to avoid commissions.”
Handing Up will not charge a commission fee, but will instead seek to make profits by charging customers “an introduction fee of €9” when they are connected to a new cleaner, before eventually charging a one time new customer fee to cleaners.
“Customers often ask what cleaning products and supplies they should use, and we think that is a great opportunity to add affiliate and advertising revenues to our platform by having the right supplies provided by partners in the cleaning industry,” Bucher told the Sharks.
The Swiss-Iranian lawyer and entrepreneur lives in Malta, where she will first be testing this product and bringing it to scale, but intends to internationalise her business once she has conquered the Maltese cleaning space.
Handing Up was launched four months ago, and according to Bucher has organically attracted 50% more customers every month. The cash injection she was looking for would go towards further customer acquisition.
“We also have been able to validate our ability to attract and reward good cleaners, as we have about 100 registered cleaners today – and a 97 customer excellence rating.”
Bucher was looking for €45,000 in exchange for 15% equity in her company, but given that her business had not yet made more than a few hundred euros, the Sharks were uncertain about the lofty valuation of her company.
Chris Vassallo saw opportunity in Bucher’s product – especially if cross-integrated with his development and real estate businesses, as a way of connecting Handing Up to potential clients.
Despite this potentially lucrative avenue, he was not prepared to invest for 15% equity, and countered with €50k for 50%.
Bucher was hesitant, as she felt that it was important to retain a controlling share of her own business, but appeared to have her concerns eased when Vassallo was joined in his offer by the AI and tech expert Angelo Dalli.
The entrepreneur accepted this offer, so the two Sharks will be splitting the 50k investment in exchange for a 25% share each of Handing Up.
It would prove to be a busy day for Sharks cooperating on investments, as well as for Dalli – who was involved in both deals.
The team behind Leet – a company with a website and app designed to facilitate the organisation of amateur sports such as five-a-side football – made their pitch to the Sharks, asking for €200,000 in exchange for 5% of their business.
“We understand that seeing our bid for 200k for 5% might be shocking to you, but we are not going to ask you for any sort of capital injection,” explained COO Ray Bartolo to the Sharks.
Leet aims to bring together everything needed to organise amateur sports. This will include the ability to build a broad community so that players will be able to put out a call for reinforcements – most importantly – the ever elusive goalkeeper.
“With Leet you’ll be able to find missing players, plan games, play against new teams you haven’t played before, keep track of scores, wins and losses, and know who is coming and who’s going to play. We’ve found that in most cases, people prefer to play with people they already know”, said co-founder and CTO Andrew Cachia.
“At its core, its more than that. The core is the community of people who love the sport and want to come together to play”, he continued.
“Whats more important to us are your expertise, your contacts in the sports industry, contacts in the gamification and design space to make the app more appealing, and beyond that help in internationalising.”
Leet, like Handing Up, is intended as a pilot programme in Malta, as proof of concept which will then be spread across Europe and beyond internationally.
They believe that Leet can be commercialised when they have 10,000 users, and without any advertising, they have already grown to just under 1,000 users.
Their proposed commercialisation is going to take several forms.
“Monetising will come from the app’s functionality and then from gamification. For example, when it comes to managing tournaments for users to enjoy we’ll take a commission. Otherwise there will be in app purchases, such as a special crest made to your own specifications,” explained Bartolo.
“The main source of income is going to be exploitation of data. Not in a bad sense, of course, but the more data you have the more valuable, specifically targetted Google ads you can have,” he explained.
Though the Sharks all expressed their interest, they were unclear about what Leet was looking for if not a cash injection. After some deliberation, they decided that three of the Sharks, Angelo Dalli for his tech expertise, Alex Fenech for his sports industry connections, and Mark Bajada for his own connections and general business savvy, would come on board as a board of advisors.
“We went into the Shark’s aquarium, and believe it or not, ended up doing even better than we had expected. We’re very excited to have these Sharks on board, and excited to move forward with Leet,” said Bartolo.
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