An聽entrepreneur who dropped out of university to launch an on-demand tech repair service has had his business valued at 拢1.5m.
According聽聽Fraser Williams, 22, and Richard Edwards, 24, 32,000 phones get broken in the UK every day.
The childhood friends aim to get broken devices fixed within hours, rather than days, without customers ever leaving their desk.
Repairly promises to pick up mobiles and tablets using a courier service,聽and return them fixed in barely three hours.
Dubbed the 鈥楧eliveroo of tech repairs鈥�, the start-up聽has already attracted plenty of investor attention, recently closing a 拢265,000 seed round with backing from Techstars and Virgin Media.
Williams says the strength of Repairly 鈥� and other fast-growth firms such as Deliveroo and Uber 鈥� lies in their ability to save time-starved Londoners the precious minutes and hours they could spend doing more important things.
He said: 鈥淲e鈥檒l come to you, and for a lot of our office customers that is the thing that is most important.
鈥淩ich and I thought about the market as a whole and the rise of on-demand services. The appeal of these is that they give customers back their time.
鈥淒eliveroo and Uber, really what their selling point really is, is saving time.鈥�
He added: 鈥淥ur timeframe varies depending on where you are, location-wise. But people in London are in such a rush. Everyone鈥檚 on their own little mission.鈥�
鈥淲e are time-starved now. All over the country, especially in London. So if you come up with a convenience, people will pay for it.
鈥淚ncreasingly, people are responding to the businesses that do save them time. It鈥檚 not necessarily what customers are getting, but how a company can save them time in delivering it.
鈥淭hen that time can be spent with the kids, or, if you want, doing extra work. Because of that, I wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if we were to see a rise in bringing more and more businesses to the doors of busy people.鈥�
Childhood friends from Hackney Downs, Edwards and Williams launched their Repairly pilot project in Newcastle before making the leap down to the capital.
Based centrally to begin with, they have since expanded gradually to cover zone one, two and some parts of zone three.
鈥淲hen we moved to London it was quite staggering how positively people reacted,鈥� said Williams who was studying business management and entrepreneurship at Lancaster University when he had the idea.
鈥淭here wasn鈥檛 much in the way of studying, I was busy launching businesses. We started Repairly in November 2015 with early pilots in Newcastle.
鈥淚t was tough, but we began to raise money from the pilots – 拢1,000 in the first week.
鈥淭hen in April 2016 we launched in London, and the idea really resonated in such a huge busy city.
鈥淲e were making 拢10,000 within the third month of being in the capital, and there has been a 20 per cent rise every month since.鈥�
The firm aims to dominate the market in London over the next 10 months, before expanding internationally.
Its next location has been earmarked as Dublin.