Imagine it’s raining outside, and suddenly, a water pipe bursts in your house. Water starts leaking everywhere. You don’t know any plumber personally, so you call your neighbour and ask if they know someone. Even if they do, the person might charge too much, and you don’t really have a choice in that moment. You just want the problem fixed.
Situations like this happen all the time, whether it’s a plumbing issue, a broken AC, or even something as simple as needing a haircut. These small problems can mess up our entire day. And finding a good, trustworthy person to fix them isn’t easy.
That’s exactly why Urban Company was started to help people solve these everyday problems easily, without stress, overcharging, or waiting around.
This wasn’t started a year or two years back to take advantage of the quick services boom, but they entered this business almost a decade ago in 2014.
But back in the day it wasn’t called Urban Company; it was “UrbanClap.”
In 2014, three friends, Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra, were going through the same problems we all face. They were young professionals living in big cities and struggling to find trusted electricians, plumbers, salon services, and more. Every time something broke at home or they needed a basic service, it turned into a time-consuming work. That’s when the idea of UrbanClap was born.
They didn’t want to create just another service-listing website. Their vision was bigger, as they wanted to build a platform where customers could easily book verified professionals, prices would be transparent and fixed, and the entire experience would feel professional, safe, and smooth.
They started small with just a few service categories in Delhi NCR and slowly began expanding. Every professional was background-checked, trained, and branded. This built confidence both for users and for service partners.
In the beginning it was called UrbanClap, but later it got changed to UrbanCompany, and it has expanded its operations to other countries such as the UAE, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia.
From those humble beginnings, the company has scaled to what it is today, where it has clocked over INR 1144.5 crores in revenue as of FY25. Not just that, even the company is now in plans to go for an IPO.
The company has raised over $453.53 million across 11 rounds of funding. Now it all seems like the company has easily reached this, but the journey is filled with certain challenges.
There are certain ground level problems which company has faced during its journey:
- Partner Protests & Pay Issues: In 2021, some service professionals protested, saying commissions were too high and they weren’t earning enough. Urban Company had to balance partner satisfaction with business sustainability. They introduced better policies, support systems, and even health insurance for their partners after the backlash.
- Covid-19 hit the core business: During the pandemic, services like beauty at home or massage therapy came to a halt. The business dropped sharply. Urban Company had to adjust quickly; they focused on hygiene, launched safety kits, offered training on COVID protocols, and built back trust to restart services.
- Consistency in their service quality: UrbanClap wanted to offer a reliable, professional experience every time, whether it was a facial or a fan repair. But each service depends on the individual person doing it. Maintaining consistency across thousands of professionals required a lot of training, SOPs (standard operating procedures), and monitoring, and even then, complaints happened.
- Working in an unorganized market: It is hard to find the skilled professionals who are willing to work under a structured system. Because over the periods, they have worked on their own system by setting their own prices, timings, and methods. Encouraging them to adhere to strict service protocols, wear uniforms, accept digital payments, and maintain fixed pricing proved to be quite challenging.
These are some major challenges that the company has faced throughout this 10-year period.
But now we need to understand the company by delving deeper into their business model. The company has two different models. One is services with fixed charges, and the other is services without the fixed charges.
For the fixed charges, they offer some services such as salon at home, spa and massage, home cleaning & pest control, and the last, grooming & wellness.
And without fixed charges, they offer some services such as plumbing, electrical repairs, AC servicing, and carpentry.
UrbanCompany has actually created a great impact; it is helpful for both the user and partners.
As per the Urban Company’s earnings index data, it shows that on average, net earnings of a service partner who is doing more than 30 services in a month earn more than INR 33,000. And according to the PGA Labs analysis, UC salon service partners are earning 4 times more than the offline beauticians.
This clearly shows how it is benefiting the partners and also simplifying the everyday needs and problems for people.
Urban Company’s major focus was on their unit economics, and because of that, they have also reduced their losses over the period.
Urban Company didn’t just solve a problem; it created an ecosystem. It empowered thousands of service professionals with stable income, dignity, and structure, while giving customers reliability, transparency, and peace of mind.
And for every founder wondering how to build a service-led startup that balances scale, sustainability, and trust, Urban Company is more than a case study.
Recently the competition is rising in this particular segment with new startups entering this segment. Let’s see how this industry turns out in future and also it is interesting to track as Urban Company is in plans to go for an IPO.
Also Read: Andhra Pradesh Aims to Become India’s Quantum Technology Capital
