Ali Hasan
Introduction – If you have a leakage in your pipes or some short-circuiting wires that you want to replace or just repair some old furniture, one thing is sure that you just can’t (DIY) do it yourself as you need professional help from the experts.
In the past, finding a professional who’s skilled and experienced enough to the job well was a complete nightmare. Even if you were lucky enough to find someone to do the job, you might be at his mercy as he may ask a ton of money for even a petty job.
Not finding a professional when in need, too much money to pay and getting exploited by him was once a scenario in India but this has changed to some extent. All thanks to Urban Clap which is now known as Urban Company.
Urban Company is an Indian online platform that offers home installation, maintenance & repair services, home beauty and wellness services. It was started in November 10, 2014 by 3 co-founders. The 3 co-founders are, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan and Raghav Chandra.
Using their services, you can book a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a beauty expert or any other skilled technician according to your needs and requirements who will visit you on your doorstep at a desired time slot and will fix whatever you want.
But today we will take a deep dive and evaluate how much of a success they have been in today’s time and how much do they actually deliver on their promise of providing a skilled technician.
Early Days – In 2013, two of the co-founders, Abhiraj Bhal and Varun Khaitan resigned from their jobs at the Boston Consulting Group in the US. After resigning they returned to India to launch their own venture. Both of them were IIT-Kanpur batch mates as well.
Both of them started a movie streaming company called CinemaBox but they shut it down later.
Another co-founder, Raghav Chandra, who earlier worked at Twitter also returned back to India around the same time to pursue Entrepreneurship. He had his own startup, an auto rickshaw aggregator called Buggi.com.
He was a one-man army coding in the morning, meeting auto rickshaw drivers in Noida in the afternoon, and marketing in the evening. He also shut his startup later.
The 3 met via mutual friends and decided to launch their own startup named Urban Clap by investing Rs 10 lakhs each.
In 2019, all 3 co-founders made their names in the list of Fortune 40 under 40.
Marketing Strategy – Urban Company spends a lot of money on TV and Social Media ads. On TV ads, Ayushmaan Khurrana appears as their brand ambassador while many popular influencers have been roped in for social media ads.
Since the pandemic, they have been promoting grooming services at your doorstep for males. The main (USP) unique selling proposition is the hygiene that they will get as the barber will be wearing a face mask and a face shield.
He will also sanitize any equipment before proceeding.
User Base & Valuation – As of 2020, they have presence in 23 locations. 19 locations are within India. 4 are outside India and they are as follows:-
- Sydney
- Singapore
- Dubai
- Abu Dhabi
They are slowly expanding their footprint and will keep on expanding until they are a household name.
Their android app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. They have a network of more than 25,000 professionals and were performing more than 800,000 service tasks per month.
They were valued at $933 million as of August 2019 and are on the verge of becoming a Unicorn.
Funding – They have raised a total of $190.9 million over 10 funding rounds.
The lead investors are as follows:-
- Vy Capital
- Tiger Global Management
- SAB Holdings
- Udhyam Learning Foundation
- Steadview Capital
- Trifecta Capital Advisors
- Bessemer Venture Partners
- SAIF Partners
- Accel
In addition to institutional funding, they also attracted individual investments from Rohit Bansal and Kunal Bahl, who are the founders of Snapdeal. In 2015, Ratan Tata, invested an undisclosed amount and joined its board as an adviser.
In 2019, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, the CEO of Flipkart, invested Rs 1.6 crores in the company as a part of series D funding round.
Revenues & Losses – In May 2020, they reported operating revenue of Rs 216 crores. Their revenues jumped by 103% due to the demand in beauty & wellness.
They reported that the home maintenance and repair services contributed 45% of total revenue while the beauty and wellness services contributed 55% of total revenue.
They reported Rs 106 crores of revenue and a loss of ₹67 crore in FY 2019. The company didn’t disclose any net profit/loss figures for FY 2020 in its financials. The net booking value of all transactions grew by 138% to Rs 918 crores in FY 2020 compared to the FY 2019.
Acquisitions & Partnerships – So far Urban Company have acquired 3 startups which are as follows:-
- Glamazon on March 4, 2020
- Goodservice on August 10, 2016
- HandyHome on January 22, 2016
In July 2019, they also partnered with the (NSDC) National Skill Development Corporation to train 30,000 services professional under short term skilling and up-skilling programs and to create micro-entrepreneurship opportunities for service professionals who were already certified under (PMKVY) Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana.
They were also recognized as a key partner of the National Skill India Mission.
Controversies – Urban Company has been involved in a major controversy when the CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal sent an e-mail to his employees and told them to ignore a customer completely. He further added that nobody should answer his queries.
His exact e-mail said “Please ignore him completely. No one should answer his queries.” This created a lot of dissatisfaction among users and many vent out their anger by posting about the incident on social media.
The e-mail got to public domain as the CEO forgot to mark his reply to staff as a private note.
The e-mail was about a customer who wanted to fix his AC but was unable to do it even after repeated requests, complaints and queries.
A former Urban Company employee reported that employees were told to ignore aggrieved customers several times. They added that Bhal can get angry. He allegedly once held a laptop above his head, threatening to throw it at a staffer who had made a mistake.
Future Goals – They plan to have an IPO by 2023 as the business is booming after the pandemic and they might soon become a Unicorn as well.
The Big Question – So now we have the big question – How has Urban Company is providing Skilled Technicians? I have used their services a couple of times and to be honest, I am pretty satisfied as of now.
They have been successful enough in providing a platform where Technicians have an opportunity to earn more and the customers have the ability to have a Skilled Technician at their doorstep at any desired time slot.
If they keep on improving their services as well as their customer service, they can very easily become the next big thing and be the one stop solution for all the home problems.
We wish them all the very best for their future.
