Are you being served?: Abhiraj Bhal CEO & Co-founder of Urban Company (erstwhile urban Clap) talks about Urban Company’s

1. Are you being served?: Abhiraj Bhal CEO & Co-founder of Urban Company (erstwhile urban Clap) talks about Urban Company’s success story Kanchan has been in the beauty business since she was 15. Last December, the 40-year-old returned to India after a three-year stint as a beautician in Dubai on account of her daughter’s education and family. Though she’d worked with several high-end Delhi salons such as Toni & Guy in the past, she chose a different path this time: Instead of working full-time with a salon, she decided to sign up with digital home services platform UrbanClap Technologies on her sister’s recommendation. She says she now takes three to four jobs a day on the platform to meet her target of making ₹1 lakh a month. “A job ties you up. This gives you a lotof freedom. And everyone likes to earn money,” she tells Fortune Indiaat one of UrbanClap’s training centres in south Delhi. “I like that the harder I work, the more benefits I reap.” Ashzad Khan’s story isn’t very different. The AC technician, who worked for companies such as Voltas and Daikin before joining UrbanClap as a freelancer, says he used to make ₹15,000 a month earlier. But his earnings have gone up dramatically to almost ₹1 lakh before expenses, working three to four gigs a day through UrbanClap. The technician from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, who supports a family of five, came to Delhi to do a polytechnic course more than a decade ago. He was unable to find a job in his hometown, pushing him to live in Delhi. Now, he plans to spend the next decade working with UrbanClap. hese individuals [service providers] are the most atomic form of business units in our society... If India needs to grow, if consumers need to benefit, they have to be empowered. Raghav Chandra, co-founder, UrbanClap. Millions of people in India have polytechnic diplomas or are trained as beauticians, plumbers, or carpenters. The government’s Skill India initiative, in fact, is one of the avenues for vocational training for many of these people. However, the job market isn’t always fair to them. If they’re lucky, they manage to find work at salons or companies at a fixed pay with long working hours. The salary is not very attractive, especially if they are living in a big city and supporting a family. Sometimes they just don’t find any work at all. The irony is that there is a huge demand for services like plumbing, carpentry, beauty services, and photography, but most of the earnings in these jobs go to the middlemen—contractors, salons, beauty parlours, studios, etc. Here’s where UrbanClap steps in. The Gurugram-based company is a digital service that connects people with service professionals from plumbers and electricians to beauticians and yoga instructors—without any middlemen. It was started in 2014 by three young men with a big idea—Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra—who in barely five years have already made UrbanClap the go-to platform for urban Indians looking for anything from pedicures to painting houses. In this short period, they have added 20,000 exclusive service professionals such as Kanchan and Khan to the platform across 10 cities in India and also in Dubai. And funds have been pouring in. UrbanClap has so far raised more than ₹700 crore (about $110 million) from investors such as Accel Partners, SAIF Partners, and Tata Sons’ chairman emeritus Ratan Tata. In less than two years, it had become one of the highest funded startups in the hyperlocal segment and is valued at around $480 million.

2. Read the complete article here - https://www.fortuneindia.com/enterprise/are-you-being- served/103554 Here’s a link to Abhiraj Bhal’s interview with NASSCOM - https://nasscom.in/interviews/abhiraj- singh-bhal Coronavirus in India: Snapdeal, Urban Company, Red Bus founders among 51 who recommend 2- week lockdown