SaaS for mobile repair shops? This startup thinks it’s a huge opportunity

The mobile repair industry is colossal. While obtaining a precise figure is difficult, estimates suggest Americans spent nearly US$23.5 billion in repairs and replacements since the past seven years. Further, as nearly 4.5 billion people across the world own mobile phones, this industry will continue to get bigger and bigger. It is also ripe for change.

Some startups targeting this industry have already achieved significant traction. iCracked, a venture that fixes cracked iPhone screens exclusively, reported that its technicians made a combined US$6 million in 2014. The startup counts Y Combinator as one of its investors, and is listed on Forbes as one of “America’s Most Promising Companies.” Clearly, there’s opportunity.

For entrepreneur Usman Butt, founder of startup RepairDesk, the mobile repair industry is one he’s all too familiar with. After graduating with a finance degree, he worked for two years in a software development company, doing sales and marketing for their enterprise solutions. This experience gave him market insight about trends and consumer demand, and he soon quit to establish his own firm, IMEIUnlock.

IMEIUnlock offered a simple product – the ability to unlock iOS and Android devices from anywhere in the world. In a few years, the site had unlocked over 130,000 phones and made several hundred thousand dollars in revenue. During the time, Usman was approached by many mobile repair businesses from countries like France, Australia, Ireland, Canada, and the UK. They inquired whether he could make an enterprise product for them to manage their repair jobs. The level of inquiries escalated. “There was a huge gap in the market,” he adds, and that indicated such a software was needed.

Capitalizing on potential

Usman and team did a survey of over 200 existing repair businesses spread across the world. What they found confirmed their initial view: small and medium sized businesses were not using any automation to track and monitor repair jobs. They found tracking inventory and spotting trends hard, which made them inefficient. With his startup idea validated, Usman decided to forge ahead and establish RepairDesk.

Currently incubated at the LUMS Center for Entrepreneurship, the startup is a cloud-based point of sale system (POS) specifically engineered for small and medium sized mobile repair shops. It allows technicians to manage repairs, sales, customers, and suppliers all in one place. The founder believes that technicians should focus on tasks that maximize productivity – and this software allows them to do so.

“The reason we are building this system is to make the process extremely simple and automated, both for the customer and the business alike,” says Usman. “There will be transparency at every stage, starting from the time the phone is initially dropped off for repair, to the time it is available for pickup.”

Repairdesk keeps track of inventory levels and notifies the business when a phone part is low and needs to be replenished. Detailed analytics are available on demand, tracking the history of phone repairs and give the owner insights into common problems, popular models, and various diagnostics. With this, businesses can forecast demand and maintain adequate inventory at all times.

Usman says RepairDesk has no real competitors as it is the first POS system that has been developed exclusively for the mobile phone repair industry. Competing software is “generic” and does not take into account specific needs of the industry, he says.