Ask HN: On-demand startup – To Pivot or not

Hi, I'm the co-founder of a 10-month old on-demand doorstep car mechanic startup (Autto.in) in India. In the last 10 months we have been pretty much in discovery mode and have had small traction of over 100 cars serviced. During the last couple of months, we have received a ton of advice from customers, mentors and potential investors. The majority of the investors are asking us to revisit the business model since it is very tough to scale doorstep services because: The typical services we could do at the doorstep are limited. We need to proportionally hire mechanics with increase in demand (not just tech scaling).

We experimented with sending a few services to workshops and honestly the customers have been unhappy since we have no control on the quality.

Customers are delighted with the doorstep service.

So on one hand to raise some money we badly need, investors expect us to pivot to the workshop market place model while we are resisting this because of our concern for customer service & quality even though it means a higher burn rate.

Cheers, Deepak