Professional services marketplace StarOfService raises $10 million

StarOfService, a French startup that offers a marketplace for local services, has closed a $10 million Series A round led by Andrea Piccioni and Silvio Pagliani — cofounders of Real Web SA and founders of immobiliare.it, ENERN Investments, and Point Nine Capital — with participation from a number of angel investors.

Founded out of Paris in 2012, StarOfService connects professional service providers with buyers and includes everything from plumbing and tutoring to photography. The platform is currently operational in a number of markets, including France, Italy, Spain, Germany, the U.K., Poland, Canada, and India.

Prior to its latest cash injection, StarOfService had raised around $2 million across two seed rounds, but now it will look to expand its platform globally.

“We are thrilled to have secured the financial backing and support of some of Europe’s most successful entrepreneurs, a team of people who have built global business success stories,” said Lucas Lambertini, cofounder and CEO of StarOfService. “We want to create the Uber for local services professionals, and we’re already growing at an exponential rate. This investment round will help us accelerate that growth further, to become the global leader in the next couple of years. As part of that ambition, we will be recruiting talent to build a global team that shares our vision and can deliver on that huge opportunity.”

Online marketplaces such as eBay, Uber, and Airbnb are key drivers in the digital economy, and we’ve seen a number of notable startup investments come to fruition in the space recently. Earlier this month, OfferUp raised $119 million to help people buy and sell stuff locally, while recruitment marketplace Hired raised $40 million, secondhand clothing marketplace Vinted nabbed $27 million, Etsy-style shopping marketplace Notonthehighstreet.com closed $27.5 million, and online auction house Catawiki secured $82 million.