Urban Company Joins The Rush Hour

SUMMARY

Everyone wants a piece of the quick commerce action, and even Urban Company has jumped on the bandwagon

Three years ago, we wrote about the 15-minute economy. At the time, quick commerce had just begun to find its feet. But in 2025, pretty much everyone — like Urban Company, this week, for instance — wants a piece of it.

Born out of the quick commerce boom in post-pandemic India, it’s similar to the renaissance in hyperlocal delivery startups almost a decade ago now. Today, when it comes to consumer services, 15 minutes is the name of the game.

Somehow the 15-minute economy has barged its way into the mainstream, but is this a bubble or a real transition? Let’s look at it, through the lens of Urban Company’s controversial launch of ‘Insta Help’ — renamed from Insta Maids after an online backlash.

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The Bandwagon Grows

It’s going to be close to two years since Blinkit announced that it would enter the professional home services space, but so far the quick commerce platform has not done anything concrete on this front.

If we know anything from the launch of Nugget by Zomato, it sometimes takes the company several years to flesh out new verticals. It was three years in the case of the SaaS product — could we see a similar launch timeline for Blinkit’s home services?

Either way, it’s not clear whether it is this potential launch that has prompted Urban Company

to introduce Insta Help. Blinkit would surely have been a factor in the decision — Eternal chief Deepinder Goyal was once on Urban Company’s board and stepped down when Blinkit announced these plans in 2023.

Something else has happened since 2023. The quick commerce boom has sparked new ideas in this space — including Nexus and Elevation Capital-backed Snabbit, which raised $5.5 Mn earlier this year to take its 10-minute service proposition to more parts of Mumbai.

Regardless of the Blinkit factor, one has to ask why Urban Company has introduced this service and why now. Is it a revenue push or just a moat against potential new competition?

Does Urban Company’s ‘Insta Help’ Make Sense?

First let’s come to the why. The most obvious answer is it’s the trendy thing to do and marketing something as new and fast does help.

But let’s examine the merit behind this move. Urban Company’s revenue model has changed quite a bit in the past two years. In fact, the revenue has nearly doubled since the end of FY22, and losses have come down significantly.

With an IPO on the horizon, revenue from services is a key focus for Urban Company, along with revenue from products sold to professionals for fulfilling these services. The former has grown faster than the latter in the past two years.

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The company does not have just a commission-based model any more; it operates a marketplace for professionals and even these gig workers have to pay a subscription fee to remain on the platform. In addition to this, there is a commission charged on every job, plus of course revenue collected from consumers.

The subscription fee paid by professionals comes with a minimum job guarantee, but multiple service partners have alleged in the past that Urban Company is not able to meet this guarantee. Despite that, partners need to be active on Urban Company in case a new job comes through.

Many partners have claimed this demotivates them from paying the subscription fee and encourages off-platform transactions. Essentially, professionals are taking on smaller tasks that allow them to juggle jobs coming from Urban Company and outside the app.

Does Insta Help solve this situation? It’s too early to tell if it will unlock revenue growth on the consumer side given the expected smaller ticket size (starting at INR 49 for now), but it is likely to increase the order volume, which might bring in more professionals over a longer term.

The ‘Dark’ Gig Worker

If Urban Company delivers more jobs to its service professionals, it might solve two problems — the complaints from professionals about fewer jobs and it will drive higher engagement from users.

However, on the flipside, with a volume-centric model, Urban Company will have to spend heavily on getting repeat customers and it has to constantly add use-cases. It also has to create a denser network of professionals to cater to the volume — just like dark stores.

Urban Company’s plan to increase the density of its professionals is not clear. The company claims it has 40,000 registered professionals world over — is this enough to pull off Insta Help?

Will Urban Company have the same pool of professionals for both its standard and instant service? How will it ensure adequate availability and no overlap between jobs in certain pockets of a city? Will it create a new layer of ‘dark’ gig workers that wait for an order to be triggered but are never listed on the standard service?

These are legitimate questions that have not yet been answered in Urban Company’s announcements around this service.

Besides this, the startup will also need to ensure that service quality does not suffer. In the past, there have been some complaints about deteriorating service quality particularly in beauty and repairs. These are not likely to be part of Insta Help as far as we can tell.

Convenience and speed only go so far, quality does matter when it comes to service. Even quick commerce today is more about categories and assortment than speed.

The difference between typical quick commerce and Urban Company’s Insta Help is that when it comes to grocery delivery, the customer satisfaction is still largely linked to getting the physical product.

A few minutes of delay do not matter here, if the products are of the right quality, which is more or less ensured with the right supply chain. Quick commerce apps have spent millions in building this network. It would be vital

Services such as cleaning and cooking are more subjective in nature. Customer satisfaction is a matter of personal preference, and delays of a few minutes do mean a lot more in this case.

Urban Company is taking a risk, even quick commerce was a big one in the early days. But if the use-case gains traction, it could pay off in a big way, just like with 15-minute delivery.

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