A services marketplace is a platform that matches you with a provider you need only rarely, such as a wedding planner, an artist who makes a painting to order, a curated experience or a vet clinic. These services cost more, take longer to choose and often run over weeks.
A home-services app sells short, standard jobs at fixed prices. A services marketplace cannot do that. No two weddings are the same, and no two paintings are the same. So the marketplace helps the customer compare providers, agree on the work and pay in stages.
Take, for example, a family in Jaipur planning a wedding for 300 guests in February. On the platform, they choose a venue, a decorator, a caterer and a photographer, from lists with photos of past work and reviews. A planner from the platform combines these choices into one package with one quote: ₹18 lakh. The family pays a 20% advance of ₹3.6 lakh through a payment gateway. They pay the rest in two more instalments before the wedding. The platform holds the contract with every vendor. It pays each vendor for its own part of the work, through split payments, and keeps a commission. The planner tracks each vendor's tasks until the wedding day.
Not all of these platforms are pure marketplaces. A pure marketplace only connects customers with independent providers. Some platforms provide the service themselves. For instance, a network of vet clinics owns its clinics and employs its vets. Its app books the appointment, holds the pet's health record and sends vaccination reminders. Inside each clinic, appointments are kept in booking software of the same kind that salons use. The page on the marketplace and inventory models explains the difference between the two ways of working.
Trust is the hardest problem for such platforms. The customer pays a large amount to a provider they have never met. So the platform checks providers before listing them, and shows reviews from earlier customers. It may also hold part of the money until the work is delivered. Holding money with a third party until a deal is complete is called escrow.
Some platforms accept members only by invitation. For instance, a community of curated experiences, such as supper clubs or weekend trips, lets a person join only when an existing member invites them. The company chooses the experiences itself.