Dharana Capital, an India-focused investment firm, has invested over Rs 400 crore (about $48 million) in home services startup Urban Company through a significant secondary transaction, per an announcement.
The shares have been acquired from employees and other shareholders, making this transaction the largest ESOP liquidity in Urban Company’s history.
With the transaction, Vamsi Duvvuri, founder and managing partner of Dharana Capital will join the board of Urban Company as a non-executive director.
Launched in 2014, Urban Company operates in 62 cities across India, the UAE, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia. It helps customers book beauty services, and massage therapy, besides cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, appliance repair, and painting work. It partners with thousands of service professionals, helping them with training, credit, product procurement, insurance, and technology, among others.
The company became a unicorn in 2021.
“Urban Company, with its full-stack approach and focus on partner enablement, has built a strong, capital-efficient and durable business in a challenging local services market,” said Duvvuri of Dharana Capital, a consumer-focused investment firm that focuses on growth-stage technology investments.
The home services market, currently estimated at $50 billion in India alone, is projected to reach $75 billion within the next five years, as per estimates of Urban Company . This market is largely unorganised and primarily operates offline. According to the company, in the top 200 Indian cities, only about 2% of home services discovery and booking occur online.
“This significant gap presents a tremendous growth opportunity for Urban Company,” it said in a statement. The company claims to have a partner network of over 55,000 hand-picked service professionals, who have been trained into organised and high-quality micro-entrepreneurs.