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Elevator Pitch

Frustrated because you cannot get your leaking tap fixed online?

Feeling ripped off because your local electrician took 500 Rs to fix an electrical socket?

Or are you tired of waiting for an hour outside the barber shop waiting for your turn on Sunday?

"Imagine a world where you can book trusted home services at the click of a button, saving you time and delivering quality you can count on. Urban Company is transforming the way you manage your home and personal care, with expertly trained professionals available on-demand for everything from deep cleaning to beauty services—all at your convenience. Our rigorous vetting process ensures you only get the best, with transparent pricing, guaranteed satisfaction, and a hassle-free experience. Join millions of satisfied customers who are already making their lives easier with Urban Company. Ready to elevate your lifestyle? Let us bring convenience to your doorstep today!”

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Understand your Product

Urban Company is the world’s largest at-home services app. Through the app, you can book at-home services from beauty & wellness for women and men to home repairs and maintenance services, such as carpenter, electrician, and plumber delivered by trained professionals conveniently at home. Some of the service categories include

1. Home Salon/Spa services
2. Appliance repair
3. Cleaning and Pest control
4. House painting and panelling
5. and many more!

Of these, the beauty and grooming segment is the biggest, accounting for nearly 55% of revenue.

As per the latest earnings report, here are some key stats

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• 1 CR+ app downloads on Play Store
• 6M+ transacting users [TTM] as of July FY 24
• active paid subscribers currently stand at about 7.5 lakh.
• 2M monthly visits from desktop and mobile combined
• FY 23 revenue at 637 INR Crores [Only India Business]
• Average rating on App store and Play Store - 4.7
• Share of repeat customer transactions - 77% of the Net Transaction Volumes
• Valued at 2 Billion USD as of 2024 - Pre IPO stage

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Understanding Core Value Proposition

Vision of the product : Empower millions of professionals worldwide to deliver services at home like never experienced before

Here are the key value propositions of Urban Company

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1. Service Quality
2. Convinience
3. Value
4. Selection
5. Trust and Safety

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Understanding the Users

Let’s have a look at some of the potential use cases for using Urban Company’s services

1. Your geyser stopped working and you need a reliable electrician to fix it.
2. You need a haircut but hate having to wait for an hour in the cramped local barber’s shop for your turn.
3. You have shifted your home to a new area and you are unaware of the the local services available to help you install your TV, washing machine, water purifier etc.
4. Your laptop crashed earlier this morning, you want to get it repaired but you are skeptical of visiting local repair shops as you do not know about the quality of their services.
5. You want a home pedicure and manicure session for your 70 year old mom who has trouble walking to the local salon.

Broad categorization

Age - Most customers are between 18-45. Among the user base that I spoke to, here is a broad split within this age group

• 18-24 - Mostly single females with a preference for beauty services
• 25-45 - Married individuals with
• • Males inclined to use services for repairs/fixes and installations
  • Females inclined to use beauty and cleaning services

There are also 45+ year old customers but the adoption and usage falls among increasing age groups.

Income - Medium to high income range individuals

Lifestyle - Busy, urban lifestyle with high preference for reliable, vetted services for routine activities or problems. Pressed for time, they have a willingness to pay as long as their needs are met.

Geographies - Concentrated within Tier 1 cities.

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Understanding your ICP

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User survey link

Urban Company Survey 1.0 - https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gPYLSJLixL8uI1VJriQ6_ZfU4pzBjz9EXnGv4_HwoHU/edit#responses

Sample Size - 12 people

72% of respondents fall within the 25-34 age group

100% of respondents reside in Tier 1 cities

80% prefer booking cleaning services and repair services online

Only 41% prefer booking beauty services online

60% users quoted Convenience, transparency in pricing and skilled service partners as the main reasons for people choosing online services for home services

100% of users have used Urban Company and no other product for availing such services

41% of users gained awareness via referrals. About 25% of users gained awareness via Social Media apps.

Trust and wide variety of services are the main choices which make users chose Urban Company over other players. Only 25% chose pricing as a factor which made them chose Urban Company

~70% of respondents use Urban Company either once in a month or once in few months.

~30% of people responded that they would continue to use Urban Company if more services would be offered.

100% of respondents are mobile users.

Top themes around why respondents like Urban Company - Brand Value, Quality and Professional Services, Easy to use app

Top themes around how Urban Company can be improved - Difficult to use the app, High pricing

ICP Selection Framework

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Understand Market

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The home services industry is mostly fragmented with a lot of unorganized players. Very few organized player exist in the market today, which is valued at around 12 billion USD.

The notable ones are NoBroker which in addition to it’s real estate platform offers a range of additional services that are similar to that of Urban Company.

Listing services like Just dial and Sulekha are one of the biggest non-direct competitors which help users in connecting with service providers.

In a highly competitive market with a very unpredictable service delivery, Urban Company has been successful in standardizing the entire service delivery process and establish it’s presence very strongly.

(begin by doing a basic competitor analysis)

(then try to understand the market at a macro level and evaluate the trends and tailwinds/headwinds.)

Now it’s time for some math, calculate the size of your market.

Today Urban company exists in all the Tier 1 cities and also exists in almost 50% of the Tier 2 cities.

The ICP analysis tells us that the target population is mostly upper middle class to upper class for most of the services offered by UC. Even in Tier 2 population, the target audience is mostly creamy middle class as the survey revealed that most of the UC services were priced more than the prevailing market rates, yet people prefer it for their standardized service approach and trust and reliability factor built via millions of customer reviews.

We consider the population in 8 Tier 1 cities and 50 Tier 2 cities to calculate the market size.

105,589,000

Average monthly expenditure on various categories is derived from the average ICP spending.

SOM of 780 crores aligns closely with the latest figures reported by Urban Company of 637 crores ( India revenues) for FY 23​

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Designing Acquisition Channel

Urban Company is in the early scaling stage where the presence is being expanded to different cities of India and the focus is heavily on user acquisition and retention, by offering services at price points that can be affordable to the targeted population. Hence they need a channel which can help them acquire users at requires minimal effort, helps maintain CAC flat while the user base scales and helps them scale the channel up or down easily.

Let us analyze this from the lens of the channel selection framework.

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Hence, their focus should be on

1. Strong referral program
2. SEO
3. 1 Paid channel

Since the company is in a early scaling mode, it should experiment on different channels and evaluate the performance of these channels with regards to effort, CAC and flexbility and then decide which one to maintain or kill.

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Detailing your Acquisition Channel

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Organic Channel

Out of the 4 ICPs defined, the below ICPs are chosen as target ICPs assuming that they are residing in Tier 1 cities.

This coincides with the data available from traffic analytics websites which shows that this ICP population drives a significant portion of traffic to the Urban Company domain. Approximately 54% of the traffic comes from this age group. People in this age group are tech savvy, inclined to shift from offline to online mode of service delivery. They also value convenience and are less price sensitive, displaying a strong willingness to pay a premium as long as quality and reliable service is assured. Although the 18-24 age group also brings in significant traffic, we are not focusing on this age group due to the criteria outlined in the ICP selection framework.

​Urban Company Traffic distribution stats

Lets us analyze how these users are discovering Urban Company.

Organic channel

Urban Company’s organic strategy has 2 splits. This is based on how they discover new products and where they usually spend their time on.

The below actions can be taken

• SEO
• Social Media

Organic traffic constitutes 80% while Paid traffic is 20%.

For Organic Searches, below are the common ways in which user tries to discover the product

Keyword analysis based on various search themes

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*CPC, CTR and other details not available

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1. Most of the keywords based on product categories are taken up by competition( like Justdial) since a company like Just dial exists from a long time and is a services listing company.
2. However, there is an opportunity to do SEO based on intent based words that contain home in it, as all Urban Company is a home services platform and it makes sense to optimize the traffic based on the intent and use case searches that contain service + home in it. These words are relatively easy to rank on SEO and are not yet taken by competition. Even the relatively newer categories listed by Urban Company like Home painting and Home paneling are good use cases to build upon in SEO.

​Social Media

A lot of new age brands leverage social media to create a first impression on users as an acquisition strategy. Given that the ICP spends a lot of time on social media apps, having some form of engaging content could be a potential option to reach out to users at scale at comparatively lower costs. This is different from paid ads as here we are relying on Urban Company's own content to act as a lever to increase awareness and acquire new customers via social reach.

This is also validated in the below article which highlights the company’s real world customer acquisition strategy where they highlight that there is a need for short form content

“We’ve realized YouTube is our primary medium as it’s the most effective channel for conversions because users get to see the services performed and understand what they would look like in their homes.” - https://rocketium.com/is/spilling-the-magic-beans/this-is-how-urban-company-drives-customer-acquisition/

Content could be

1. Short form videos (Reels) - < 60 second videos on YouTube demonstrating how Urban Company offers services which are traditionally not offered in a home setting. User survey revealed that ~90% of users would prefer online services for repairs/fixes. Only about 40% of users would prefer using online services for spa/salon/beauty services. Hence there is a need for lifting aware about in-home brand services. So short form content can emphasize on how UC can offer these services within the comfort of a home.
2. Long form content : 3-5 min content - These are explainers detailing the need to have regular cleaning/maintenance done for household appliances and how Urban Company can add value by offering its range of services under a single umbrella. 83% of respondents of the user survey preferred to use Urban Company mainly due to the range of services offered, so reinforcing this through content will create top of the mind recall among potential customers. This can again be validated by the below article which emphasises the fact that the messaging needs to change based on the intent, structure and ease of understanding among the ICPs.

“We realized that we needed a minimum of 15-second or 20-second creative assets, as our messages were complicated. ” - https://rocketium.com/is/spilling-the-magic-beans/this-is-how-urban-company-drives-customer-acquisition/​

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Paid Ads

(Understand what is already being done, what is working out well and what needs to be stopped)

Step 1 →Define the CAC: LTV ratio. If your product has a healthy CAC:LTV ratio, proceed with paid ads.
Step 2 → What digital channels will you work with?
Step 3 → What will be your audience selection & creative strategy? (What you build in ideal customer profile should reflect here)
Step 4→ Design the Ad Campaign
Step 5 → Frame the Ad Budget

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CAC to LTV Calculations

CAC - ~500 INR ( Rational for CAC - https://www.ndtvprofit.com/business/2016/12/31/urbanclaps-fy16-balancesheet-is-nothing-to-laud-about)

LTV - AOV (1000 Rs) * Frequency ( Once per month) * Retention (4 months) [ Most users said that they use Urban Company once in few months)

LTV = 1000 * 1 * 4 = 4000INR

At 1:8

Justified to run paid ads as CAC to LTV is over 1:4

Ad campaign framework

Target audience - Male and Females - 25-34 years living in Tier 1 cities, who are tech savvy and prefer taking services from the comfort of their homes.

Channel selection

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As mentioned by the Product Marketing manager at Urban Company -​* “We’ve realized YouTube is our primary medium as it’s the most effective channel for conversions because users get to see the services performed and understand what they would look like in their homes.” - https://rocketium.com/is/spilling-the-magic-beans/this-is-how-urban-company-drives-customer-acquisition/

Ad campaign framework

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Rational for creatives- Focus on affordability of services as most of the respondents in survey feel that pricing is higher and not justified in some cases, even though the quality is good. This needs to come out clearly in the creatives that the services are aimed at masses.

Paid Ads: Budget and projections

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Referral Program/Partner Program

User surveys conducted by me revealed a very interesting insight. 41% of users discovered Urban Company after someone had referred them. Though this may not be a very reliable indicator of the success of the referral program at Urban Company (mainly due to the limitations in sample size), nevertheless, the referral program is being used by customers to refer others and it is being used as a lever for acquisition

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Applying the referral framework to the referral program at Urban company

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Whom to ask?

All users who have hit the happy flow have to be nudged for a a referral. Experiencing the Aha moment is the motivation/trigger for the user giving a referral.

A successful referral program depends on customer having an exceptional experience. The best reason someone will refer Urban Company is when they have a great experience with it. The idea here is to identify when someone has a good experience and then take them to the referral loop. A great experience is delivered when -

How will they discover?

Currently there is limited scope for referral discovery on the mobile app.

The referral modal is shown on the below places

• Home page, after the user scrolls all the way to the bottom.
• Account page, only after the user scrolls to the bottom. Referral discovery needs to be automatic and user should not have to invest cognitive strength to discover it.

There is scope for referral link to be shown on

• On the top of the home/landing page to facilitate early discovery and reinforcing the need for referrals at every visit.
• Upon completing an order on the request of a service partner

3. Why will they share?

• Referrer’s Incentive: Urban company offers wallet money for referrers , 100 Rs after each referee completes their service. There is also a scratch and win feature for giving additional rewards to users who refer.
• Platform Currency : Giving cashbacks and discounts is a way of giving platform currency to users to ensure that they keep coming back to the platform and remain engaged, enhancing LTV.
• Social Risk : Very low as users are referring a product whose Core Value prop targets basic needs ( repairs/fixes, haircuts) or wants/desires (spa/salon services) and most target users would have a need to satisfy either ( or both) of these at some point of time.

4. How will they share?

1. 1:1 over whatsapp, facebook messenger
2. 1: many via a link over email

Referral Process analysis

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The Whatsapp referral message is very generic and could be personalized to have better view and impression rate.

This message is good as it highlights the monetary incentive and also adds an element of urgency around the need to sign up, however it needs the below improvements

• Greater personalization by highlighting the USP even further - Ex: Hey { }, Check Out Urban Company, India’s largest and most trusted home services company offering services at your doorstep. Use the below link to get an instant 100 Rs voucher when you book an appointment for salon, spa, grooming or repair services.

5. How to track

Urban company does not have a referral tracking mechanism today built within the app. There should be features around

• Showing the referrer on how many users are referred
• What stage of the referral process at they at - Referred, Signed Up, Booked a service
• Push notifications each time a new user is referred
• Push notifications to send to users who were referred to book a service (if not already done so)

Proving this level of details will make users act on the users who were referred and who have not yet acted, prompting them to get activated.

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6. How to keep referring

A good reward program does the below

• Enables the customer to keep referring
• Enables the new customers to & old customers to keep using the app

Urban company should introduce a milestone based referral program where users are giving additional guaranteed discounts for every 5/10/15th referral along with free hair cut/salon service which will increase stakes for referral.

• Milestone 1**:** Refer 5 friends and earn upto Rs. 500 cashback in a month.
• Milestone 2**:** Refer 10 friends and get Rs 1500 cashback.
• Milestone 3**:** Refer 20 friends and get upto Rs. 2500 cashback PLUS
• • An instant glow facial worth 999/- on every 20th referral OR A haircut, shave and a head, neck and shoulder massage worth 999/- on every 20th referral - For gents
• There could also be a lucky draw for people referring 20+ users, or a spin wheel with assured gifts. The idea is to up the ante to a level where people feel motivated to refer and are incentivized appropriately.

While monetary benefits may lose steam in the long run, offering luxury/prime services for free will not only motivate the user to keep referring, but will also offer a way for users to experience higher cart value products, giving a chance for up and cross selling to customers. In the long run, this will contribute to increased LTV from such customers.

Current CAC for referral channel is 200 INR per user. In the new framework, CAC would marginally increase upto max 400 per user ( including the free service of 999). Even if most of the users ended up referring 20 users did refer 20 users each the overall CAC of referral program would still be around 400-500 INR which is very low as compared to acquiring users through paid ad channels. ( depends on the current referral quotient - I do not have sufficient data on this, this is just a broad estimation)

7. How to increase referrals?

• Train service reps to ask for a referral after each service.
• • Push notifications asking for referrals after 2 hours of completing service. Since a good service creates a long lasting impression, even if the user forgets to refer soon after the service is completed, nudging the user to do so later increase chances for referral.

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References-

https://rocketium.com/is/spilling-the-magic-beans/this-is-how-urban-company-drives-customer-acquisition/

https://www.urbancompany.com/blog/urban-companys-annual-business-summary-fy23

https://finshiksha.com/can-urban-company-navigate-a-path-to-profitability/

https://ajuniorvc.com/urbanclap-home-services-startup/

https://www.ndtvprofit.com/business/2016/12/31/urbanclaps-fy16-balancesheet-is-nothing-to-laud-about​

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