Bidvine

Idea

Introduction

Bidvine is a service marketplace helping customers find and hire professionals for services relating to health & wellness, home improvement, events & photography, learning, and more. Customers submit a request and get bids from interested and available professionals.

For professionals, Bidvine is an online marketing platform enabling quick connection with relevant customers. By capturing granular service and travel preferences, availability, and budget, Bidvine matches professionals with their target customers. The matching algorithm leverages machine learning to optimise for professionals being hired through the platform.

Intended impact

We believe that the traditional methods for local service professionals and consumers finding one another can be extremely inefficient.

For consumers, asking friends and family members and searching directories can take hours to find someone right for the job. At Bidvine, a customer can submit a request in two minutes and immediately be matched with professionals that are available and interested in the job.

For professionals, they are looking for new customers and putting up flyers on notice boards isn't cutting it anymore. Online directories can produce leads that aren't right for their business because of the type of service the customer is looking for, their location, or their availability. Some of the mainstream ad platforms can be just too complicated and costly. We make it easy for pros to connect with relevant prospects.

Our mission: by 2025 we want to help 250,000 local businesses to grow by £1 billion and add 200,00 jobs.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Bidvine first launched in 2015 and we've been growing ever since. We now offer over 300 services and have more than 100,000 registered professionals across the UK.

Services Evolution
In developing the Bidvine platform, over the last four years, we have introduced product features that offer individual benefits and that work together to deliver an exceptional experience.

BidMatch: Adwords for local services
Throughout our journey, one of our biggest accomplishments was the introduction of BidMatch. This allows professionals to bid automatically on requests that match their preferences, availability, and budget. This enables them to focus more on billable hours and less on prospecting new customers.

Marketing Efficiency:
We're constantly focused on growing efficiency. Currently, we see positive revenue contribution on a customer's first request. In addition, the lifetime value of a professional on bidvine is 20x their acquisition cost.

Monetisation strategy

Primary revenue stream (Professionals)
Professionals on Bidvine pay a cost per introduction to prospective customers (that match their preferences). When sending a bid manually, professionals pay a fee per bid. When bidding automatically, through BidMatch, they pay a fee when a customer contacts them after receiving their bid.

Subscription revenue (Professionals)
Some professionals opt for a monthly subscription on Bidvine. Subscriptions provide professionals with some additional features, discounts on leads/contacts, and in some cases a monthly credit allocation.

Request Promotion (Consumers)
Although Bidvine is free for customers overall, we have recently introduced a feature enabling customers to boost their request for a small fee.

Use of proceeds

The funds raised in this round will be used to continue to develop the UK marketplace, expanding into another international market and the introduction of additional tools for service professionals.