Why an MIT engineer bet his startup on plumbers and electricians, not restaurants

Avoca did not start out targeting plumbers and electricians. Founders Apurva Shrivastava and Tyson Chen, who met during a poker night at MIT, initially built an AI answering service for restaurants after co-founding the company in 2022.

The pivot came from a simple calculation. ‘When a restaurant misses a phone call, that’s a $30, $40 order,’ Chen told Fortune. ‘When a home service business misses a phone call, that could be a $30,000–$40,000 HVAC install they’re missing. So, instantly, we thought: wait, this is a completely different order of magnitude.’ In 2023, they built a product specifically for Rescue Air, which helped them land their first customers.

Avoca’s AI voice agents now serve what Shrivastava calls ‘the physical economy’ — plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians and roofers — picking up calls instantly, booking appointments directly into a company’s calendar, and following up on old unsigned quotes. In 2025 alone, the HVAC industry was worth about $50 billion, with a projection of $75 billion by 2032.

According to Fortune, Avoca has raised more than $125 million over the last couple of years, valuing the company at $1 billion. Shrivastava told the publication: ‘This is a huge growth moment in the home services economy… No AI wave is replacing the job of a technician, at least in the next five years.’

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Vronmikah2024