Services marketplace UrbanClap has raised Rs 165 crore (~ $25 million) in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Accel Partners and SAIF. It plans to use the funding for geographical and category expansion: 25 cities and 100 categories over the next one year, double its employee size from the current 300 to 600 and acquire other companies. In a year, it aims to have 100,000 professionals listed on its platform and serve 100,000 customers every day.
Previous funding: In June, the company raised $10 million in a round of funding from existing investors Accel Partners and SAIF, for scaling its platform, hiring and to expand to at least 15 cities by the end of the year. The Gurgaon-based company previously raised seed funding of around $1.5 million (Rs 10 crore) from SAIF Partners, Accel Partners and Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal of Snapdeal, in April this year.
In the same month, Urbanclap started its operations in Mumbai and said that it would be branching out to 10 more cities and expand its team from 50 to about 250 in the next six months. At that time, users could only use its services through the Android app, but now the company seems to have launched an iOS app, and its services are also available on the web.
UrbanClap claims to serve 5,000 customer requests daily, and has a seller base of over 20,000 professionals. It is currently operational in Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Delhi NCR and is hiring across product, marketing, engineering and business development.
Founded by Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra and Abhiraj Bhal in October 2014, UrbanClap provides professionals for over 75 services, including plumbing, wedding photography, music lessons, yoga classes and interior designing.
Developments in the services marketplace sector:
– Earlier this week, Services marketplace LocalOye laid off 60 employees mostly from its call servicing unit to focus on automating the entire process of hiring service professionals.
– Earlier this month, online services provider UrbanPro launched a Q&A feature that let users inquire about the skill set and education of the experts listed on the platform.
– This month, Taskbob, a Mumbai-based on-demand home and services startup, acquired Bangalore based Zepper, which offers services similar to Taskbob, for an undisclosed amount. In April, TaskBob had raised $1.2 million in funding.
– In August, Timesaverz, a marketplace for on demand home services, raised Series A funding worth $2.2 million from Unilazer Ventures.
– In July, Zimmber, a hyperlocal home solutions company, raised pre Series A funding worth $2 million from IDG ventures and Omidyar Networks, with participation from multiple other investors.
– In June, Goodservice, a 24 hour chat-based concierge app, raised seed funding worth $1.6 million from Sequoia Capital.
– In January this year, Gurgaon-based Near.in raised Rs 1.8 crore from a series of individual investors. The platform was launched by Wirkle co-founder Sunil Goyal, Lomesh Dutta & Akshay Khanna, offers service providers across various categories.
