A PA for Every Man

For Rs 5,000 a month, Big Help offers you a personal assistant to sort out your life.

A corporate lawyer who manages her career and her kitchen just couldn’t cope with the different eating habits of her four-member household. Her son wouldn’t eat the austere diet prescribed for her diabetic father-in-law, and her husband had different tastes. Then, she got in touch with a new Indian company which, for Rs 5,000 a month, got a person to manage her kitchen. The assistant surfs the internet for interesting recipes that meet each person’s dietary prescriptions and emails it to her client, with a list of shops stocking the ingredients. In another case, an NRI found it impossible to stay home to attend to delivery boys and repairmen. He didn’t even have the time to hire a domestic help. He, too, signed up with the company, which found him a domestic servant and attended to all his odd jobs.

Big Help is India’s First Personal Assistant Service Company. For Rs 5,000 a month, it will get you a PA to perform the role of a secretary without sitting in your office or home. For Rs 100 a task, it will send an office boy to run errands for you, including babysitting your home while the plumber works, and submitting your passport renewal form.

 In the past one year, Bharat Ahirwar, the business development executive, and his team have organised 25,000 songs into MP3 format, hired a yacht for a client to propose on, researched jazz clubs in Paris and even booked a table for a client with spare time on a business trip. “We are about end-to-end coordination and doing it intelligently,” says Ahirwar. 

Their office is in Bandra, the expat hub of Mumbai, as NRIs and foreigners are important targets. “We once had an expat approach us with two requests. He wanted a 24-hour, English speaking, un-smelly, non-veg driver. And he wanted his basin fixed,” says Ahirwar, who has also organised a medical certificate overnight for British clients who couldn’t board an international flight as they had fever and boils. They flew the next day.

But getting local clients is tougher. Indians are stingy and look for innovative ways to get more than they pay for. Big Help is constantly fighting attempts to use their PAs as marketing and sales agents.

About The Author

Shubhangi Swarup