Here’s How the Indian Home Services Marketplace is Expanding Globally

The Gurugram-based home services online marketplace, which recently expanded its reach globally to Australia, Singapore, and the UAE, rebranded itself from Urban Clap to Urban Company in January this year. The fundamental reason for rebranding was the company’s plan to be a ‘horizontal gig marketplace’ along with a global presence in various segments such as home repairs and maintenance, and beauty and wellness. The company has not ceased its progress yet; it has struck down a business deal in the Australian Market.

The India-based home services marketplace, Urban Company has recently bought Glamazon, an Australian beauty application. Glamazon, which operated in the Australian market for seven years now, has sold its assets and enabled Urban Company to spearhead the firm.  

Co-founders of Glamazon, Lauren Silvers and Lisa Maree saw Urban Company's expansion into the Australian market as an incredible opportunity for their users to have a broader reach across a wide variety of services, according to the company’s official statement.

The acquisition of the Australian beauty app, Glamazon’s business assets are considered as a vital opportunity for Urban Company, which plans to extend its business operations and secure its position in the on-demand home services segment of Australia. 

How Urban Company’s Model is Helping Consumers 

As the Gurugram-based home services business is increasing its roots globally, its users are bridging with reliable independent professionals and availing a series of high-class personal services, from makeup, hairdo, and hair spa to cleaning, plumbing, and wall painting services.  

The company asserts to have an ignoramus nexus of more than 25,000 active, trained self-employed professionals. It further claims to be currently performing more than 8 million services every month throughout various geographical areas like the UAE, Singapore, Australia, and India. 

"Australia is an attractive market and holds great promise for Urban Company with its demographic advantages. We believe that there is a huge opportunity for us to deliver high-quality service in-home repairs and beauty services. We look forward to contributing to ahealthy service ecosystem in Australia,” Abhiraj Bhal, Co-founder of Urban Company, said.

“Urban Company and Glamazon have a completely aligned mission, to empower independent, mobile professionals to become entrepreneurs, enabling them to have successful freelancing careers. The synergies in our mission and vision were the catalyst for joining forces with Urban Company,” Lauren Silvers, Co-founder of Glamazon, said. 

The Gurugram-based home services company started its operations in Australia in November last year. At present, the company renders home cleaning services through its mobile application and website. Until now, it has established its footprint in 22 cities beyond India, Singapore, and the UAE. 

As per the business deal, Lauren Silvers, the Co-founder of Glamazon, will administer the launch of Urban Company's beauty and wellness offerings in the Australian market.

According to the latest highlights, the Australia Pacific region customer is the largest spender around the world for beauty services. The Asia Pacific considered for one-third of the global industry value for beauty and personal care in 2018 and is expected to generate over half of the total$68 billion in absolute growth over 2018-2023.

Other Investments in the Domain 

Similar to Urban Company, other companies in the startup ecosystem have also struck investment deals. The Bengaluru-based doorstep car service and repair provider company, Pitstop has recently garnered $2.5 million in Series A funding round. Landmark, which is led by TPG Growth, led the funding round.

With the current investment, Pitstop is planning to expand in 15 cities by the cessation of 2020. The company is deciding to bring an additional 1000 garages and over 1500 DST vans by the cessation of 2021. 

“We are very proud to be associated with Group Landmark in our journey to change the automotive aftermarket service space across India and South-East Asia. Landmark has many firsts to its name and this investment speaks volumes about the foresight that they have. There is a great deal of learning from Group Landmark as we set up our network of hyper-local garages and fleet of doorstep vans to take Pitstop to the next 100000 customers,” Pitstop, CEO & Founder, Mihir Mohan, said.

According to the company’s statement, the existing investment companies of Pitstop have also participated in the funding round. In the previous year, the company collected funding worth $2.9 million from Blume Ventures and Goldbell Group of Singapore.

Another wealth management company, Fintso has garnered INR 19 crore from a cohort of individual investors in an angel funding round. 

According to VC Circle, the investors who participated in the round include Rajeev Juneja (CEO at Mankind Pharma), Pratul Shroff (founder of Info chips) and Dilip Khandelwal (MD at the Asia Pacific, Deutsche Bank) among others.