ET BureauBENGALURU: UrbanClap, a mobile marketplace for services ranging from beauty services at home to wedding photographers, has raised about Rs 165 crore ($25 million )led by Silicon Valley-based investor Bessemer Venture Partners, an early backer of Skype and Pinterest. Existing investors Accel Partners and SAIF participated in the round.
This fund infusion-- that has valued the one- year old startup at more than $100 miilion-- gives the company sufficient cash to dominate the home services business. UrbanClap has now raised a total of about $37 million, so far.
In October, ET was the first to report that UrbanClap is in talks with Bessemer for the next round of funding.
“This is a winner take all market – there is no place for second best,” said Abhiraj Bhal, cofounder of UrbanClap. Currently UrbanClap is serving 5000 customer requests per day, and with an active seller base of more than 20,000 professionals.
UrbanClap is currently present in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune and the company plans to extend its offering to 25 cities and 100 categories over the next one year.
UrbanClap helps users directly connect with those professionals who are interested and available for their request. The company has a matchmaking algorithm which shortlists a set of professionals to whom the lead is relevant and sends it to them. These professionals then take effort to review the lead on their partner app and if they find it to be a good fit, they send in a personalized quotation and response. Thereby user is in connected to upto 5 interested professionals in real time.
The professionals on the other side receive leads that are relevant to them and select the best ones to respond. This is important because UrbanClap plans to monetize by charging its partners to respond to requests through its platform.
An increasing number of services startups are aggregating handymen such as electricians and plumbers as well as caterers and tutors, stitching together a highly fragmented market pegged at close to $100 billion.
“It takes a ton of technology led processes and supply side thinking to make it work so fast, that it creates customer and provider delight," said Vishal Gupta, the MD of Bessemer Venture Partners. "We are impressed with how the UrbanClap team has aggressively built this mobile marketplace in a short period of time, and a capital efficient manner to become the industry leader."
Other venture capital funded players in this space including GoodService, Housejoy, LocalOye, Zimmber, Taskbob, UrbanPro and Timesaverz.
Local Oye has raised $5 million led by Tiger Global. HouseJoy, which is in late stage talks to raise their next round led by Amazon, has raised $4 million from Matrix Partners till date.
The services space has already attracted a lot of investor interest in mature markets like the United States where startups like TaskRabbit and Thumbtack have attracted large rounds, while Google and Amazon are also testing this space.
This fund infusion-- that has valued the one- year old startup at more than $100 miilion-- gives the company sufficient cash to dominate the home services business. UrbanClap has now raised a total of about $37 million, so far.
In October, ET was the first to report that UrbanClap is in talks with Bessemer for the next round of funding.
“This is a winner take all market – there is no place for second best,” said Abhiraj Bhal, cofounder of UrbanClap. Currently UrbanClap is serving 5000 customer requests per day, and with an active seller base of more than 20,000 professionals.
UrbanClap is currently present in Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune and the company plans to extend its offering to 25 cities and 100 categories over the next one year.
UrbanClap helps users directly connect with those professionals who are interested and available for their request. The company has a matchmaking algorithm which shortlists a set of professionals to whom the lead is relevant and sends it to them. These professionals then take effort to review the lead on their partner app and if they find it to be a good fit, they send in a personalized quotation and response. Thereby user is in connected to upto 5 interested professionals in real time.
The professionals on the other side receive leads that are relevant to them and select the best ones to respond. This is important because UrbanClap plans to monetize by charging its partners to respond to requests through its platform.
An increasing number of services startups are aggregating handymen such as electricians and plumbers as well as caterers and tutors, stitching together a highly fragmented market pegged at close to $100 billion.
“It takes a ton of technology led processes and supply side thinking to make it work so fast, that it creates customer and provider delight," said Vishal Gupta, the MD of Bessemer Venture Partners. "We are impressed with how the UrbanClap team has aggressively built this mobile marketplace in a short period of time, and a capital efficient manner to become the industry leader."
 |
Local Oye has raised $5 million led by Tiger Global. HouseJoy, which is in late stage talks to raise their next round led by Amazon, has raised $4 million from Matrix Partners till date.
The services space has already attracted a lot of investor interest in mature markets like the United States where startups like TaskRabbit and Thumbtack have attracted large rounds, while Google and Amazon are also testing this space.
( Originally published on Nov 19, 2015 )
Get Unlimited Access to The Economic Times
