Traditional segments such as construction, mortgage lending and freight shipping that were once largely overlooked by the tech industry are witnessing a surge in startup activity. This boom is fueled by deep-pocketed investors willing to make increasingly bold bets in segments with strong disruption potential.

The latest startup to reap the rewards is Glendale, California-based ServiceTitan Inc., which provides operations management software for home services businesses. The startup today announced that it has raised a $165 million funding round led by Index Ventures on a $1.65 billion valuation.

Index, whose past investments include Facebook Inc. and Dropbox Inc., was joined by several other prominent backers. The participants included Dragoneer Investment Group, T. Rowe Price, Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners and Iconiq Capital, which counts tech billionaires such as Mark Zuckerberg among its clients.

ServiceTitan will use the funding to expand its product capabilities. The startup provides a cloud-based platform that helps home services business such as electric repair companies manage day-to-day operations. It includes payment processing features, tools for coordinating field personnel, an analytics dashboard that tracks business performance and a range of other capabilities, including integrations with external services such as QuickBooks.

ServiceTitan’s one-stop-shop approach has struck a chord in the market. The startup boasts a customer base of more than 2,500 businesses that collectively employ more than 50,000 technicians and provide some $10 billion worth of services per year.

On the occasion of the new funding, ServiceTitan revealed that it’s on track to double those numbers next year. The startup should still have plenty of room left to grow from there: It claims that consumers spend $400 billion a year on home services in the U.S. alone. That helps explain why the Index-led investor consortium decided to inject $165 million into ServiceTitan just seven months after its previous $62 million round.  

“This new investment means we can grow our product and engineering teams, work towards making ServiceTitan an even more comprehensive operating system for home service businesses, and better improve the lives of our customers,” ServiceTitan Chief Executive Ara Mahdessian (pictured, left, with co-founder Vahe Kuzoyan) wrote in a blog post.

“This is an industry that has been overlooked by tech companies for a long time, so it’s vindicating to have built a meaningful business that serves a sector so full of deserving customers hungry for modern innovation,” Mahdessian added.

Photo: ServiceTitan