Gurugram-headquartered Urban Company, which went public today, is scaling up UC Instant, a service through which customers can book home repairs, beauticians and other services within 30-60 minutes. The move is part of the company’s efforts to improve service delivery speeds on its platform, founder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal told ET in an interview.
“We have to be meaningfully better on speed of delivery, quality of service or offer far more value. At least two of these three things have to fall in. We have to work hard and create that value proposition,” Bhal said.
Explaining the company’s approach, Bhal said speed and value for money are closely linked to the density of supply and demand on the platform. “If you don’t have demand density and supply density in a micro-market, you can’t do it because otherwise the cost of keeping people for buffered capacity goes up dramatically,” he added. “Now that we’re operating at scale… we’ve been rolling out UC Instant across our micro-markets, through which users can get services in the 30-60 minute window. That’s a bet we believe can accelerate growth.”
UC Instant is different from the platform’s InstaHelp offering, through which it lets users book house-helps for jobs such as cleaning, cooking prep, packing and unpacking in a 15-minute timeline.
Also Read: Urban Company's fresh investment push on 15-minute house-help category may weigh on profitability
Bhal said the 10-15 minute timeline is unsuitable for its other services. “I don’t think it’s going to be 10-15 minutes in our category… it puts too much pressure on the supply chain.
On providing customers better value, he said that as Urban Company grows demand and expands the pool of service professionals in each micro-market, partners “spend less time waiting for jobs and more time inside customers’ homes delivering jobs”.
“This results in better earnings for service professionals and it also brings down systemic costs. As the systemic costs come down, you can transfer some of that benefit in terms of better pricing. For example, in some of our high-density markets, the minimum checkout pricing is lower,” he said.
“One has to work quite hard in home services to create that delta across speed of delivery, customer service quality and value for money. Across these three vectors, if one is able to get that flywheel going, then it’s a compounding business,” Bhal added.
Urban Company currently provides over 60 services on its platform, including plumbing, electrical work, house cleaning, appliance repairs, beauty services and massage therapy.
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“We have to be meaningfully better on speed of delivery, quality of service or offer far more value. At least two of these three things have to fall in. We have to work hard and create that value proposition,” Bhal said.
Explaining the company’s approach, Bhal said speed and value for money are closely linked to the density of supply and demand on the platform. “If you don’t have demand density and supply density in a micro-market, you can’t do it because otherwise the cost of keeping people for buffered capacity goes up dramatically,” he added. “Now that we’re operating at scale… we’ve been rolling out UC Instant across our micro-markets, through which users can get services in the 30-60 minute window. That’s a bet we believe can accelerate growth.”
UC Instant is different from the platform’s InstaHelp offering, through which it lets users book house-helps for jobs such as cleaning, cooking prep, packing and unpacking in a 15-minute timeline.
Also Read: Urban Company's fresh investment push on 15-minute house-help category may weigh on profitability
Bhal said the 10-15 minute timeline is unsuitable for its other services. “I don’t think it’s going to be 10-15 minutes in our category… it puts too much pressure on the supply chain.
On providing customers better value, he said that as Urban Company grows demand and expands the pool of service professionals in each micro-market, partners “spend less time waiting for jobs and more time inside customers’ homes delivering jobs”.
“This results in better earnings for service professionals and it also brings down systemic costs. As the systemic costs come down, you can transfer some of that benefit in terms of better pricing. For example, in some of our high-density markets, the minimum checkout pricing is lower,” he said.
“One has to work quite hard in home services to create that delta across speed of delivery, customer service quality and value for money. Across these three vectors, if one is able to get that flywheel going, then it’s a compounding business,” Bhal added.
Urban Company currently provides over 60 services on its platform, including plumbing, electrical work, house cleaning, appliance repairs, beauty services and massage therapy.
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