Ratan Tata Backed UrbanClap Raises $21 Mn From Vy Capital, Others

Ratan Tata-backed, Gurugram-based mobile services marketplace, UrbanClap has raised $21 Mn Series C funding. The round was led by Internet investment fund Vy Capital. Existing investors SAIF Partners, Accel Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in the round.

As per a report, Vy Capital invested about $1 Mn in buying shares held by UrbanClap employees. Apart from this, the funding was used to take over partial stakes of angel investors and Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

UrbanClap was founded by Varun Khaitan, Raghav Chandra, and Abhiraj Bhal in October 2014. It is a mobile marketplace for providing close to 97 categories including beauty services, photographers, electricians, home cleaning & repairs, yoga & guitar instructors, etc. It is currently operational in eight cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune.

As per the company website, it has about 65,000 verified service professionals on its platform. It claims to have served over 1.5 Mn customers till date.

Commenting the funding, co-founder Abhiraj Bahl said, “The new round of capital gives us elbow room to invest in core areas of our business such as supply onboarding at scale, training, building spares and parts inventory, etc. This will help us firmly cement our market leadership position.”

He further added that the startup will use the recently raised funds ‘to expand to more cities, invest in technology, and add new vendors.’

Bahl added that the company was also looking to go the IPO route. He added, “We have to stay at the core of what we do and do not lose the market. I don’t see a reason why we will not be able to IPO at a healthy market cap.”

Till date, UrbanClap has raised about $60.7 Mn funding in six rounds. InApril 2017, the company raised about $3.1 Mn (INR 20 Cr) in venture debt from Trifecta Capital through non-convertible debentures. Prior to that in December 2015, Ratan Tata had also invested an undisclosed amount in UrbanClap.

In November 2015, the startup disclosed its $25 Mn (about INR 165 Cr) Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors Accel and SAIF Partners. SAIF and Accel Partners had invested $12 Mn across two rounds previously. Ratan Tata had also invested in the startup in December 2015.

As per Inc42 Datalabs, over 400 startups entered the hyperlocal market from 2011 to 2016. Out of these, about 193 were funded and raised more than $1 Bn funding in total and 100+ shut down.

In May 2017, Quikr acquired UrbanClap competitor, on-demand home services startup Zimmber. The acquisition was an all-stock deal valued at about $10 Mn. Other players in this space include Housejoy, Localoye, and Timesaverz etc.

(The development was reported by LiveMint)