American Tamil Jambu Palaniappan appointed Checkatrade CEO

Is “Checkatrade” heading to be the next big digital platform? It could be with their new CEO, a Tamil from San Francisco who once headed Uber Eats in the UK and EMEA.

From Portsmouth, in the south of England, Checkatrade is the UK’s leading digital marketplace for helping homeowners find a quality tradesperson. Millions of homeowners across the country use Checkatrade to find, hire and rate tradespeople each year.

Both Uber & Checkatrade grapple with bringing areas that have a high number of self-employed workers into the digital age, using “thepower of technology to add value to traditionally offline industries”.

Last year, Checkatrade appointed US raised Tamil Jambu Palaniappan as their Chief Executive Officer. He took up his new role in September.

Jambu, 36, brings a deep breadth of experience growing direct to consumer technology and digital platform businesses, both as an investor and a senior industry executive at Uber, the ride hailing platform.

He joined Uber in his twenties to launch their Dallas operations, rising up the ranks to hold several executive roles in the US and abroad. He played an important role in the growth of Uber in EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) and India. From 2016 to 2018, he was appointed Head of Uber Eats, the food delivery service in EMEA, building and scaling that business from its inception.

Jambu is a Non-Executive Director and member of the Supervisory Board of JustEat Takeaway.

He joined Checkatrade having served as Managing Partner and Head of Europe at OMERS Ventures since November 2019, where he led the Canadian pension fund’s investment into high-growth technology companies such as Deliverect, ultimate.ai, Clarisights and Fonoa.

The platform has around 600 employees,serving three million homeowners every month, and 49,000 registered tradespeople who pay an annual membership fee of £149 a month. In a recent Times article, it was reported the company turned over £976 million last year, with a loss of £50 million loss after tax.

“I am very excited to be joining Checkatrade, the leading place to find quality tradespeople online. The home services market is very large but still early in its digital journey, providing us a great opportunity to drive growth and market share.”