Silently, and discreetly, Facebook has launched their hyperlocal services platform in India, which has been conceptualized, designed and developed to target the Rs 10 lakh crore hyperlocal services market which has been largely untapped till now.

In a statement, Facebook spokesperson said, “We’re in the early stages of testing a way for people to easily find more Pages for the services they’re interested in,”

Besides few major players such as UrbanClap, QuikrServices, HouseJoy and Zimmber, there aren’t any big startup in this space. Overall, there can be around 150-250 online platforms all over India, where hyperlocal services are provided.

And Facebook is now all set to disrupt this space.

Why This Is Facebook’s Masterstroke?

As of now, there are around 20 lakh business pages on Facebook, and their new hyperlocal platform will optimally use this data to become the major player. All Facebook needs to do is, aggregate the information and present before the user via search engine.

As of now, Facebook services offers 80 services which have been categories under these heads: plumbers, spa and beauty care, event planning, pet services, medical and health, arts and marketing, automotive, and business services.

Based on the location of the user, Facebook will list all the service provides of that niche.

Considering that Facebook already has a massive database of such service providers, sorted by location, then its no brainer that they will very soon capture a large portion of this market.

But.. Monetization?

It is not yet clear, about monetization strategy by Facebook. For instance, classified sites like Sulekha and JustDial charge some money to get listed; while others like UrbanClap charge a commission on each order.

As per estimates, online service providers and platform receive around 6000-7000 orders a day; but majority of the service providers are still offline.

In future, Facebook may charge a price to get listed in the first rank; or some service charges to allow customers to use the Messenger chat and directly communicate with the service providers.

It seems Facebook has hit the right note with the launch of their services platform, as both the consumer and the service provider are active on their own platform. Besides, its a well known fact that services niche has a margin of 20-30%, compared to products niche where margin is much less.

Will hyperlocal services niche observe consolidation after the entry of a bigger player? Do let us know by commenting right here!