Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal Joins Urban Company As Independent Director

Delhi NCR-based hyperlocal service provider Urban Company (UC) has appointed four new independent board directors to guide the unicorn and ensure good governance. 

The new independent board members are Ireena Vittal, former partner at McKinsey & Co.; Ashish Gupta, cofounder of Helion; Shyamal Mukherjee, former chairman and senior partner at PwC India; and Deepinder Goyal, founder and CEO of Zomato, according to a press statement.  

With the appointment of these industry leaders, UC’s board will now comprise three executive directors, three non-executive directors and four independent directors. “UC is committed to having a board with at least 50% independent directors.” it said.

Founded in 2014 by Abhiraj Bahl, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan, Urban Company (formerly known as Urban Clap) is a home service startup that focuses on beauty and massage, appliance repair, plumbing, carpentry, cleaning, and painting.

UC is currently present in more than 40 cities in India including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune with four international markets Australia, Singapore, Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It rebranded itself from Urban Clap to Urban Company to have a more globally acceptable brand name.

Meanwhile, UC entered into the unicorn club with a $255 Mn Series F funding round in June 2021 led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, with participation from Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview. It was valued at $2.1 Bn at that time.

In December 2021, UC filed a civil suit against four of the protestors, citing that the protests are illegal. The startup has been marred in controversies as some of its partners, mostly beauticians staged protests in the past outside its headquarter due to its workers’ policies.

The Delhi NCR-based startup rebranded its various verticals in 2020 and made them sub-brands of UC. Its home beauty vertical was split under the women-focused brand Urban Beauty, men’s grooming brand Urban Grooming and Urban Spa for at-home massages, while home improvements and repairs came under self-explanatory Urban Cleaning, Urban Repairs, Urban Painting sub-brands.

It has a partner network of 40,000+ handpicked service professionals, empowered through training, technology, financial services, tools, product procurement and a host of other ecosystem enablers, thereby transforming them into organised and high quality micro entrepreneurs. 

“We are humbled to have esteemed industry leaders join our board as independent directors, as we step into our next phase of growth. They bring in a lot of experience and industry expertise that will guide us in our company building journey,” said Abhiraj Singh Bhal, cofounder and CEO of Urban Company.

A brief about the appointed independent directors: 

Ireena Vittal

Ireena Vittal serves as an independent board member of companies including Compass Plc, Diageo Plc, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd., HDFC Ltd., Wipro Ltd. She remained a partner with McKinsey & Co for 16 years. Vittal has a graduate degree in electronics from Osmania University and completed her MBA from IIM, Calcutta.

Dr. Ashish Gupta

Dr. Ashish Gupta is a cofounder of Helion and serves as independent board director for Info Edge, Hindustan Unilever, Pubmatic, Simplilearn and Gupshup. He is also the former cofounder of Tavant Technologies and Junglee. He has also worked at Woodside Fund, Oracle Corporation and IBM Research. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a Bachelor’s degree from IIT Kanpur.  

Shyamal Mukherjee

Shyamal Mukherjee is the former chairman and senior partner at PwC in India. He is a Chartered Accountant and holds degrees in Commerce and Law from the Delhi University. He is also a non-executive independent director board member of ITC since 2021.

Deepinder Goyal

Deepinder Goyal is founder and CEO of Zomato. In 2021, he was also brought on board as board of directors for Unacademy and Magicpin. He completed his graduation from IIT Delhi in 2005 with a degree in Mathematics and Computing. After pursuing his graduation from IIT Delhi, he worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company in Delhi.

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