Million Dollar Apps - Story Behind Urban Company
Urban Company (formerly known as UrbanClap) is a home services startup founded in 2014 by three young entrepreneurs - Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Ragav Chandra. Urban Company is the go-to service for all home related services ranging from pedicures to getting your house painted.
Initially started in India, the company now has expanded its operations to Australia, Singapore, and the UAE. In these four countries, it serves 22 cities, has 25000+ trained professionals and over 5+ million satisfied customers.
How did a small startup grow up to become one of the largest at-home services provider? Find out in this article as we lay out the success story of the company and its million dollar app.
History of Urban Company
The two founders of Urban Company, Abhiraj Bhal and Varun Khaitan were batchmates in IIT Kanpur. They both worked for Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Singapore and USA respectively.
The other founder, Raghav Chandra, studied computer science in University of California, Berkeley. He worked at Yelp and Twitter prior to Urban Company. Chandra was interested in creating mass jobs and impacting the society with economies of scale and social platforms.
All three men returned to India in 2013 and wanted to do something there. Bhal and Khaitan introduced a streaming service called CinemaBox, and Chandra opened an auto-rickshaw startup called buggi.com.
The three collaborated and felt an opportunity to create an ecosystem that enriched the lives of people and at the same time, where funding options would be available. So, in 2014, they started the company with the name UrbanClap.
They started with connecting beauticians, photographers, plumbers, etc to people who would need such services. They would seek service providers through Facebook groups, and find customers through local markets.
Eventually they built a website, and their service gained traction and experienced constant growth since then. Investment firms started taking notice of their company, and soon they received fundings.
After their success in India, the company expanded to Australia and Singapore and later, to the UAE as well. In January 2020, they renamed their company from UrbanClap to Urban Company. Abhiraj Bhal, the co-founder believes the renaming will help increase their universal appeal.
Urban Company funding
Urban Company raised over $200 million in funding over 6 rounds. Let’s take a look at their funding history:
Seed funding (April 2015): $1,600,000
Series A (June 2015): $10,000,000
Series B (Nov 2015): $25,000,000
Series C (Jul 2017): $21,000,000
Series D (Nov 2018): $50,000,000
Series E (Aug 2019): $75,000,000
Total funding: $203.6 Million in 6 rounds
Investors include Accel Partners, SAIF Partners, Trifecta Capital, Ratan Tata, Rohit Bansal, VY Capital, Kunal Bahl, Steadview Capital, and others.
In terms of numbers, the company had a gross revenue of ₹116 crore for the financial year ended March 2019.
Why is Urban Company successful?
Urban Company started off as UrbanClap, a Gurugram based digital service company that connects people with service professionals through their platform. The three founders set out with this mission as they tried to enter this industry that barely had any competitors.
It’s not like they were completely competition free. There were other companies such as JustDial, Sulekha, and HouseJoy, and a few more, but there was something different about Urban Company that made them stand apart from the rest.
For instance, they have no middleman unlike these aforementioned services, and hence the service professionals and the platform are able to divide it between themselves. Their revenue model is based around the commission they earn from the fee earned by the service provider.
Urban Company also makes money from selling products to these professionals. Urban Clap constantly adapts and evolves their strategy based on the current ongoing trend. They have other differentiation factors such as providing training to these service providers and enabling a quality control check.
To conclude, Urban Clap could become a million dollar company because they could solve a really tough problem that had a huge demand while being different from their competitors.
Royex Technologies is a mobile app development company based in Dubai. We have worked with more than 300 clients globally since 2013. We have developed over 50 mobile apps of all kinds so we have the skill and expertise to deliver you a quality finished product that will grow your business. For more information please visit our website at www.royex.ae or call us now at +971566027916
About the Author
Rajib Roy
Rajib Roy, is the CEO of Royex Technologies and the Chief Visionary behind the AI-first product called EYAANA.