UrbanClap operates in India’s largest online home services marketplaces. The addressable market is significant and the total home services market is estimated to be $65Bn across India. UrbanClap offers both Standard Services like (i) plumber, electrician and carpenter (PEC), (ii) beauty, (iii) appliance repair, (iv) pest control, (v) cleaning, (vi) laundry as well as Customized Services like (i) wedding services, (ii) health, (iii) academic, (iv) personal care, and (v) home building.
Half a Million unique users have used Urban Clap and they have got 50% repeat requests. The company is receiving ~100,000 service requests per month and has maintained a strong ~99% response rate on all service requests. Urban Clap has more than 30,000 service entrepreneurs on its platform and plans to increase this base to 300,000 over the next 12-18 months. After a rigorous selection process, only 7-10% of the overall pool of professionals is selected by UrbanClap. The company runs its ad campaigns on Facebook, Google, radio and offers a lot of offline activations.
The company takes 20-25% of the total professional fees for a given job as its commission. The lucrative business for UrbanClap is the customized business. While the customized business contributes 70% of volume, it makes up for 85% of overall value. Beauty services is the most integrated and often repeated service line for UrbanClap. Average order size for a beauty service is US$20 per order for an average tenure of 2 hours. Professionals tend to latch on to the UrbanClap platform once they realise that a significant chunk (> 30%) of their business is coming via Urban Clap.
Cost of doing background verification at US$3 per professional is a significant cost for Urban Clap. Currently, customer acquisition cost is high at US$6. Six months ago, the customer acquistion cost was US$20. The company endeavours to bring the customer acquisition cost down to US$1 in the next 18 months. Urbanclap hopes that volume will do the trick.