Urban Company has had a stellar debut at the stock markets.
Urban Company’s shares popped nearly 60 percent on the stock markets after they listed today. Urban Company’s IPO had a price band of Rs. 98-103 per share, but the shares listed at Rs. 162 per share. Since listing, the shares have been holding steady and have maintained their early gains.
With its stock market debut, Urban Company is valued at Rs. 23,000 crore ($2.7 billion). The three founders, Abhiraj Singh Bahl, Raghav Chandra and Varun Khaitan own 9.8 crore shares each, so their equity is now worth around Rs. 1,600 crore each after the IPO. Early Urban Company employees too have made serious amounts of money with this liquidity event.
Urban Company was founded in November 2014 by Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra in New Delhi as a platform to connect consumers with verified home service professionals. The founders, who previously worked together at the Boston Consulting Group and in technology roles in the US, started Urban Company (originally UrbanClap) to address the unreliability in hiring home service providers. Early investments included seed funding of $1 million from Accel Partners and SAIF Partners in 2015, followed by several rounds raising significant capital from investors like Bessemer Venture Partners, Tiger Global, and Prosus Ventures, totaling about $445.9 million. The company has grown into Asia’s largest home services marketplace, operating in 50+ cities across India and internationally, with over 6,600 employees and more than 42,000 active professionals. In FY25, Urban Company reported revenue of Rs. 1,260.68 crore, and it was profitable to boot, with a profit of Rs. 239.77 crore.
And Urban Company has now not only built a massive business for itself, but also gone public. Over the last 11 years, the company has silently executed on its plans, never seeking the limelight or being involved in controversies, but working mainly to serve there customers. There had been some minor hiccups along the way, including protests by their service partners, but Urban Company seems to have taken those in its stride, and continued to push along nevertheless. And it wasn’t a given that the company could end up where it has — when it had started out, the home services space was crowded with names like TaskBob, Homejoy and many others. Urban Company not only managed to out-execute them all, but now has a virtual monopoly in the home services space. And with a stellar stock market listing, Urban Company seems to have early momentum in this next phase of its journey.