Downing Ventures invests £4.2m in home improvement marketplace Rated People

London-based venture capital fund Downing Ventures is investing £4.2m in Rated People, an online marketplace connecting homeowners with local tradespeople.

Rated People, headquartered in Southwark, offers access to over 50,000 tradespeople representing more than 30 trades.

The platform covers the whole of the UK and is free for homeowners to post jobs. Trades customers pay a subscription and transactional revenues to access the marketplace and provide quotes on projects.

Rated People will invest the seven-figure boost in marketing, sales and product development.

Downing Ventures investment director James Lewis said: “The UK market for online home services is highly fragmented. Competitors mostly operate a directory led ‘listings’ model, making it harder to screen their tradespeople base and difficult to provide pricing transparency for homeowners.

“Rated People have the technology expertise to give homeowners close to on-demand access to local, and most importantly, available tradespeople who can provide competitive quotes to get their work completed.”

He added: “We believe that this is a compelling opportunity to back an impressive management team in a growing and digitally under-penetrated UK market.”

Rated People’s marketplace lets homeowners request multiple quotes from different tradespeople, offering a typical response rate between two minutes and two hours.

In its mission to ensure quality in the jobs carried out, the company performs automatic and manual screening and works in partnership with Experian, Action Fraud UK and Trading Standards.

Chief exec Celia Francis commented: “Rated People has experienced significant growth in recent years.

“The £2.5bn of home improvement work flowing through us is huge and we’re operating in an exciting industry where that translates to a 4.5% market share. There’s great potential for future growth.”