What if the next on-demand category isn’t about bringing something to you — but sending someone to help you?
That is the idea behind CarryMen, the startup co-founded by Kanishka Malhotra after an everyday experience in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar highlighted a simple but recurring problem: managing children, shopping bags and a crowded market at the same time.
What began as a solution for hands-free shopping has since developed into a broader proposition. CarryMen is building an on-demand Human Assistance Platform, where customers can access trusted assistance for shopping, hospital visits, railway and airport support, personal errands, family assistance, events and other situations where another pair of hands can make a difference.
For this edition of The Untapped 30, we speak with Kanishka Malhotra, Co-Founder of CarryMen, about turning an overlooked everyday inconvenience into a business, why customers may be willing to pay for human assistance, and how the company discovered that the opportunity extended far beyond carrying shopping bags.
Kanishka also discusses one of the harder questions behind such a model: can trust-based human assistance be standardized and scaled across cities?
The conversation offers a founder’s perspective on a category Untapped Markets is also tracking through its India Shopping Assistance Services Market Forecast Report 2026–2033.
“We see human assistance as the missing layer between people and the physical world.” — Kanishka Malhotra, Co-Founder, CarryMen
1. CarryMen started by solving a very simple but often overlooked problem: making offline shopping easier. What made you believe this everyday inconvenience could become a scalable business?
Answer:
It started with a very simple personal experience. While shopping in Lajpat Nagar with our young children, we realized how difficult it was to manage bags, children and shopping at the same time. What struck us was that this was not a rare problem—it was a recurring inconvenience faced by families, women, senior citizens and anyone navigating crowded markets.
We initially didn’t know it would become a large business. We simply believed that if we could organize this basic human need—having an extra pair of hands—we could build something valuable. Once we started speaking to customers, we realized the need extended far beyond shopping. That insight eventually led us to think of CarryMen as a broader on-demand Human Assistance Platform, rather than a shopping service.
2. Shopping assistance is still a relatively new service category in India. What did you see in consumer behaviour that convinced you people would be willing to pay for a helping hand?
Answer:
The biggest signal was that people weren’t looking at the service as simply “carrying bags.” They were paying for convenience, time, comfort and peace of mind.
During our early validation, customers told us about situations where they would genuinely value another person being physically present—whether helping with shopping, accompanying someone, managing luggage or handling an errand. We also saw that people were already paying indirectly for convenience through delivery, cabs and other on-demand services.
Our belief was that there was one major gap: technology could bring a product or vehicle to you, but who do you call when what you actually need is another human being? CarryMen was built around that gap.
3. CarryMen is evolving beyond shopping into a broader on-demand human assistance platform. Was that always the larger vision, or did the opportunity become clearer after you launched?
Answer:
The original problem we identified was shopping assistance, so that is where we started. The larger opportunity became much clearer after we launched.
Customers began suggesting completely different situations where they needed help—hospital visits, railway and airport assistance, family support, events, personal errands and more. That feedback showed us that the underlying need wasn’t “someone to carry my shopping bags.” It was “I need a trusted person to help me when I can’t be there myself or simply need an extra pair of hands.”
So shopping became our entry point, but human assistance became the category we wanted to build.
4. Trust is particularly important when customers are relying on another person for everyday assistance. How have you approached building safety, reliability and trust into the CarryMen experience?
Answer:
Trust has to be built into the model from day one because we are not delivering a package—we are sending a person to interact with another person.
Our approach is built around verification, training, standardized SOPs, clear service expectations and accountability. We want every CarryMen Partner to understand not just what task they are performing, but how they should communicate, behave and handle different customer situations.
We also believe physical presence can actually help build trust. Our initial market presence allowed customers to see and understand the service before booking it digitally. As we scale, our objective is to combine that human trust with technology, so customers get the convenience of an app without losing the confidence that comes from knowing who is assisting them.
5. What has surprised you the most about how customers actually use CarryMen compared with how you originally expected them to use the service?
Answer:
The biggest surprise was how quickly customers expanded the definition of what CarryMen could do.
We initially thought primarily about shopping and carrying bags. But customers started asking, “Can you help my parent at the hospital?”, “Can someone assist me at the railway station?”, “Can someone accompany my family member?”, or “Can you help at an event?”
That was an important realization for us. Customers weren’t buying a particular task; they were buying access to a trusted helping hand. Their requests helped us understand that CarryMen could become a much broader human-assistance network.
6. India already has large delivery, home-service and gig-economy platforms. Where do you believe the opportunity for human assistance sits alongside these existing categories?
Answer:
We don’t see CarryMen as competing directly with delivery or home-service platforms. Those businesses are primarily designed to deliver a product or complete a defined service. CarryMen addresses a different need—the need for a person to physically assist you.
If you need food, a delivery platform can bring it to you. If you need a plumber, a home-service platform can send one. But if you need someone to accompany your elderly parent, help you navigate a crowded market, assist at an airport, manage an errand or simply be an extra pair of hands, there isn’t a dedicated organized category for that.
We see human assistance as the missing layer between people and the physical world.
7. As you think about expanding CarryMen beyond its initial markets, what do you believe will be the biggest challenge in taking this model to a much larger scale?
Answer:
The biggest challenge will be maintaining trust and consistent service quality while building density across multiple cities.
Human assistance is operationally more complex than delivering a product because every interaction involves people, and every situation can be different. We therefore cannot simply scale by adding more Partners. We need to build strong systems around recruitment, verification, training, SOPs, technology, quality control and local operations.
Our initial physical pilot taught us exactly this lesson. It helped us understand the customer and operational requirements, but also showed us the limitations of a booth-led model. That learning is why we are building a technology-enabled platform that can standardize and scale the experience.
8. Finally, our signature question: If we interview you again in 2030, what headline do you hope people are writing about CarryMen?
Answer:
“CarryMen made asking for human help as easy as ordering a cab.”
By 2030, I want CarryMen to have created a completely new category where people don’t hesitate to ask for assistance because they know there is a trusted platform that can send the right person to help them.
I want the phrase “Call a CarryMen” to become synonymous with needing a helping hand—whether it’s for your parents, your family, your travel, your work, an event, an errand or simply a difficult day.
Our ambition is not just to build a successful company. It is to make human assistance an organized, accessible and trusted service category across India.
The Untapped Perspective
CarryMen’s evolution highlights something broader than the emergence of another convenience service.
India’s on-demand economy has become highly effective at moving products, food, vehicles and specialized service providers. CarryMen is testing whether there is room for another layer: organized access to a person when the requirement does not fit neatly into any of those categories.
The early evolution of its use cases is particularly interesting. CarryMen began with shopping assistance, but customers started asking for help with hospitals, railway stations, airports, family members, events and personal errands — ultimately pushing the company toward the broader idea of human assistance.
That expansion also creates the company’s biggest challenge. CarryMen isn’t simply matching supply with demand. When one person is being sent to assist another, verification, training, behaviour, reliability and trust become part of the product itself.
If those elements can be standardized while the network expands, CarryMen could be testing the beginnings of a distinct service category rather than simply a new use case within the gig economy.
And perhaps Kanishka’s 2030 ambition captures that category best: “CarryMen made asking for human help as easy as ordering a cab.”
For a deeper look at the category, explore Untapped Markets’ India Shopping Assistance Services Market Forecast Report 2026–2033.
The Untapped 30 is an interview series by Untapped Markets featuring founders, operators, investors and industry leaders building in markets and categories that deserve a closer look.
