UrbanClap raises $10 million in Series A funding from SAIF, Accel Partners

To use funds to expand to other cities, ramp up team

Mobile services marketplace, UrbanClap has raised $10 million from exiting investors SAIF Partners and Accel Partners. 

The company, currently serving Delhi-NCR, Bangalore and Mumbai, plans to invest the funds to scale up its operations to other cities and ramp up its team.

Earlier this year, UrbanClap had raised a seed round of $1.6 million from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal - the founders of Snapdeal.

Started in October 2014 by Abhiraj Bhal (IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Kanpur, BCG), Varun Khaitan (IIT Kanpur, BCG) and Raghav Chandra (early Twitter engineer, UC Berkeley), you can hire services across five major categories - home (electricians, plumbers, cleaners, interior designers etc.), health (yoga, fitness trainers, nutritionists etc.), events (planners, photographers, caterers etc.), lessons (music, dance etc.) and other personal services (Salon at home, party make-up etc.). 

Commenting on the round, Bhal said, "The problem we are solving, hiring of a trusted local service professional, is extremely broken. The world over, companies have attempted to solve this with limited success. We are committed to solving this problem deeply, and end-to-end, no matter how long it takes. With the new funding, we plan to grow 10 times on every metric in the quarter."

UrbanClap works on two models. For standardised, blue collared services like electricians or home cleaning, where you just want the job done, you can directly book and pay for the service on their app.

For white collared services, which is the larger part of the business, like photographers, interior designers or yoga instructors, UrbanClap makes the effort to understand exactly what you need, and helps you hire the right professional, in your budget. 

Mukul Singhal, SAIF Partners, said, "Local services is a very big market and pain point for the India consumer. There is high level of non-standardisation of service quality, pricing and supplier base. The market is ripe for disruption, both from a discovery and consumption of services perspective. We are excited to partner in their journey of creating a large platform benefitting both consumers and merchants of various services."

Abhinav Chaturvedi, Accel India, said, "Local services is a globally unsolved problem. The UrbanClap team just does not want to settle for sub-optimal, and constantly keeps trying new things to perfect their model. We believe that their smartphone-based approach, high quality team and sharp focus on customer experience will differentiate them."