UrbanClap Inches Closer To Unicorn Club With Latest $933 Mn Valuation

Gurugram-headquartered home services startup UrbanClap has inched closer to the unicorn club with its latest $75 Mn Series E funding round, part of which has been transferred over to the company. Last week, UrbanClap announced that it has raised $75 Mn led by Tiger Global with participation from existing investors Steadview Capital and Vy Capital. The question was about UrbanClap’s valuation after that round, and the company is now within touching distance of the unicorn status that many startups yearn for.

According to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs filings accessed by Inc42, the company has only received INR 241.48 Cr ($34 Mn) out of the total deal. The shares issued to Vy Capital and Steadview Capital include only preference shares while Tiger Global has picked up equity as well as preference shares. The company has allotted preference shares at a premium of INR 1,17,058 with a fair value of INRs 10 each share while equity shares were issued at a premium of INR 1,17,067 with a fair value of INR 1.

Interestingly, with this round, Vy Capital has increased to 11.35%, while Steadview makes it to around 8.63% and Tiger Global at 2.51% from its fifth fund. The details available show that the round values UrbanClap at nearly $933 Mn, based on the company’s total shares and value of shares of the Series E round. The growth is exemplary as the company has nearly doubled its valuation in one year i.e. last Series D round, as it was valued at $480 Mn post-money.

The company’s founders had also put in $4.2 Mn (INR 28.75 Cr) each— Abhiraj Bhal, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan— into their five-year-old company. UrbanClap offers services such as beauty and spa at home, appliance repair, plumbing, carpentry, cleaning, and painting. It is currently present in 10 Indian cities including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune along with two international markets, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

UrbanClap Revenue And Performance

UrbanClap had witnessed an operating revenue of INR 116 Cr in FY2019, which is a 150% rise in comparison to last year. This was, however, a fall from 225% jump in revenue for 2018. However, the operating loss of the company has increased by 26% to touch INR 72 Cr in the fiscal. It has reported fulfilling three times the number of orders that it did last year, with 3.3 Mn service orders in FY19.

Here are some other key performance metrics:

• UrbanClap has reported fulfilling three times the service orders as compared to last year, totalling to 3.3 Mn service orders in FY19
• The total transaction value of orders stood at about INR 400Cr, as compared to INR 130Cr in FY18
• It claimed to have fulfilled 620K orders in April 2019, which resulted in the company’s annual run rate of 7.4 Mn service orders for FY19
• UrbanClap’s annual gross transaction value of orders stood at around INR 1,000 Cr
• Annual revenue run rate was pegged at about INR 200 Cr

After an early interest from investors and entrepreneurs, startups which had ventured into hyperlocal services suffered a bubble burst in 2016 owing to a lack of clear business models and too many similar apps and services. UrbanClap was one of the survivors of the bubble burst and has made the most of its survival lessons.

At present, UrbanClap’s competition is the offline market but no major player has made it to the online market which UrbanClap caters to. A report by Ken Research has predicted that the Indian hyperlocal market will grow to reach over $317.4 Mn (INR 2,306 Cr) by 2020. As UrbanClap becomes an inevitable unicorn, some of the important milestones would be unit-economics profitability or profitability on the scale it operates on.

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