Key Highlights
- That was traditionally delivered by humans: house managers, executive assistants, and trusted fixers who served the everyday world to the wealthy. Now, a new set of startups is attempting to sculpt that quiet operating system into a product. Over the past year, personal concierge services have drawn renewed attention from founders and large consumer platforms alike.
- After a short stint leading Flipkart Minutes, Kabeer Biswas, the founder of delivery platform Dunzo, is raising around $12 million for an AI-led personal concierge venture, The Economic Times reported last month. Food delivery and quick commerce brand Swiggy has launched Crew, a travel and lifestyle concierge positioned as a premium extension of its core platform—signalling a category taking shape in its own right, albeit one aimed at a smaller addressable market. View full ImageOnboarding Swiggy's Crew app was waitlisted and gated with a referral code on 24 December afternoon. Consumer-facing players like Indulge and Pinch sell access via subscriptions, relying on salaried concierges backed by software.
- Legacy operators like LesConcierges are a pure B2B play, embedding concierge offerings for banks, brands, real estate developers, and loyalty programs. Also Read | Can Airbnb redefine travel again?Swiggy’s Crew, currently live in Bengaluru, Mumbai, and the NCR region, offers a broad menu of services: securing hard-to-get restaurant reservations, curating end-to-end travel itineraries, organizing birthday parties and gifts, handling airport transfers, and even assisting with tasks such as Aadhaar updates.
- Unlike Swiggy’s core food and grocery businesses, Crew is not built for speed or frequency.
- Instead, it targets users willing to pay for judgment, access, and follow-through—attributes traditionally associated with human concierges rather than apps. Butlers on appThis renewed interest has pulled in a new crop of startups, each angling for a piece of the pie at a different level of service. Pinch Lifestyle, founded in 2021 and bootstrapped so far, is among the earlier attempts to bring concierge services to a consumer audience.
