New Yorkers have pretty much everything they could ever need at their fingertips, from food delivery and pet-sitters to car services and everything in between. A new app called Romio, which dubs itself “Uber for Everything Else,” aims to take that convenience one step further by providing expert recommendations on those services — and enabling said experts to “expand their own economies,” founder and CEO Tarik Sansal told Metro.
“Romio is introducing a model where experts, influencers and friends can make between 3 percent and 7.5 percent of every booking made or received by someone on the platform for a year,” Sansal added. “It’s a beautiful ecosystem. We really think of it as a social movement that helps bring people together to help their lives and families.”
Romio had a soft launch in March and unveils a new on-demand option Friday after “we discovered that trust is amazing, but it needs to be fast,” Sansal said. “Contacting 15 individual plumbers or housekeepers to see who’s available is a lot of work, so we’re now introducing our on-demand feature, and we’re excited about letting users get trusted services scheduled within minutes.”
Because the app provides a unique value of expert access to users, the bar to be a Romio expert is “very high,” Sansal added. “We have the most established, respected minds in every service category who have consistent media appearances, book launches, speaking engagements and events because they bring the level of know-how that no other app can deliver.”
So far, Romio’s most-demanded services are for housekeepers, dog walkers, plumbers and hairdressers.
“As more users adopt the platform, we will see wider use from personal trainers to handymen and nutritionists,” Sansal shared. “We’re also bullish about creating new behaviors. The possibility that you can hire a personal assistant or a student to run errands for you for a fee that is not inflated and benefits you and the provider is exciting.”
New York is Romio’s first market, but “we are preparing to scale to other markets,” Sansal said. “Influencers and celebrities are drawn to our platform because they see it as source of social goodness that allows people to do the things that they love to do and make their lives and those who use them better. We’re looking forward to an exciting summer and beginning to accelerate in the fall.”
Learn more at romio.com, or download the app from Google Play or iTunes.
