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Urban Company’s fresh investments in house-help category may hit bottomline: Analysts

At-home services platform Urban Company has gone public at a time when it is going into a fresh investment phase in a new category: house help. While the market leader has fended off competition multiple times over its 11-year existence, it has to now face venture capital-backed rivals — Lightspeed-backed Snabbit and General Catalyst-backed Pronto — in the 15-minute house-help segment.
CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal said the house-help segment was key to Urban Company's growth plans. “We believe this category can drive significant strategic growth for Urban Company over the next four to five years,” Bhal told ET in an interview.
Urban Company was named Startup of the Year at the ET Startup Awards 2025 on August 28.
Executives estimate Urban Company fulfils 60-65% of daily orders in the house help category, with the rest split between Snabbit and Pronto. In August, Urban Company's InstaHelp clocked around 210,000 orders, while Snabbit and Pronto recorded 80,000-90,000 orders and 25,000-30,000 orders a day, respectively. In total, the industry saw around 330,000-350,000 orders a day.
Snabbit and General Catalyst-backed Pronto have raised nearly $40 million in early funding. While modest by consumer internet standards, industry executives said the funding is enough to support subsidised pricing, fast customer acquisition and the push to onboard service professionals.
For Urban Company, which only recently turned profitable after years of investment in training and supply chain standardisation, a prolonged price war with InstaHelp could erode margins.
Urban Company reported a net profit of Rs 240 crore for FY25 against a loss of Rs 93 crore the previous year. Operating revenue rose to Rs 1,144 crore from Rs 828 crore in FY24.
ETtech
With higher spending on InstaHelp, analysts project operating losses of Rs 100-120 crore in FY26, against an operating profit of Rs 12.1 crore in FY25. They expect FY26 and FY27 to be the peak loss years for InstaHelp, before tapering in FY28 and breaking even by FY29.
“A lot of the categories we operate in are quite competitive, with several players in each. I think the reason people sometimes assume there isn't intense competition is that many of the lookalikes never reach real scale,” said Bhal. “But within each vertical, we've always faced meaningful competition. InstaHelp is exciting for us, and we're moving quickly, but it's still very early and we know we'll have to invest in this space.”
Source: EconomicTimes
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