Urban Company funding. Urban Company raises $255 mn via Series F funding, mulls listing in next 18-24 months

Urban Company, a home services marketplace, has raised Series F funding of $255 million. The startup is also considering a public listing between 18 and 24 months.

The Series F round was led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, with participation from Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview. With this latest investment, Urban Company is now valued at $2.1 billion. The latest round includes a primary capital infusion of $188 million and a secondary sale of approximately $67 million by select angels and early investors. Including this round, which is the largest so far, the company has raised $330 million, consisting of nine investors and a few angel investors.

Urban Company will utilise the new investment towards innovation, training, product development, enhanced quality control and safety measures for both partners and consumers.

Varun Khaitan, co-founder, Urban Company told BusinessLine that the company plans to take it public over the next 18-24 months. “It is very much possible that we go straight to that step from here (after this funding) depending on markets conditions at that time,” Khaitan said. He also added that the company is looking at all the options as far as listing overseas or in the domestic market.

Khaitan said the startup will focus more on the training of its partners, which could go up from 35,000 currently to around 3 lakh. In addition, it will also strengthen its engineering team and extend the services to several other countries. The company plans to expand the portfolio of services to include home interiors, nursing staff and even cooks.

The company, founded in 2014, also aims to increase its geographic footprint by entering the top 100 cities in India and expanding into international markets. “With this funding, we plan to rapidly scale our business while continuing to invest further in the safety of our consumers and service partners, training of partners and product development,” Urban Company CEO and Co-Founder Abhiraj Singh Bhal said.

“Urban Company is disrupting a large, fragmented industry that has seen low digital adoption until now. Through their technology-enabled platform and keen focus on providing high-quality, trained service partners, Urban Company has been able to achieve the very difficult task of productizing services,” said Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Investment for India, Prosus Ventures.

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