Study of Home Services Platform- Urban Company

- Hiring skilled professionals

- On-demand service - Reviews and ratings - Working
- Training and onboarding
- Professionals - Scheduling appointments at home - Friendly behaviours of Professionals
- External agency - Maintaining the website and - Multiple payment professionals - People facing
for document mobile application option - Loyalty schemes and difficulty in finding
- Government compliance
- Get ratings and promotional offers local providers
verification - Marketing
provider details - Self-serve app - Skilled Local
- Kit vendors - Live in app Chat providers without job
- E-payment services - Professionals looking
service provider - Safe and secure for extra income
services - Social Media handles - Professionals who
- Mobile application - High-quality want to work as per
- App notifications
- Website service with their convenience
- TV ads
- Skilled affordable price
- Emails
Professionals - Active customer
- Website
care support

- Operational cost: Salaries of employees, Web hosting,

Insurance cost etc
- Commissions
- Assets cost: Computer, office etc - Subscriptions
- Marketing expenses - Advertisements
- Training of professionals
Product-market fit

Initially,

● Customers were getting - High quality of service | Transparent pricing | On-time, every time
● Service providers getting - on time payment | Regular opportunities | Reasonable compensation | work flexibility | Upskilling
● Service provided : low ticket: beauty, repairs, plumbing etc , high ticket : connect customers to interested professionals
● The product market fit seems to be good, but the issues started to arise
● Offered 120+ services, hard time supervising the standard of service, ratings were going down

Reformed:

● Shifted from matchmaking platform to full stack platform

● Fired 25% of professionals with bad ratings, reduced service offerings to around 20 services and divided it into beauty and
household
● More trainings were provided, better hiring process, used analytics and technologies for supervision
Product-market fit

Issues faced by professionals:

● With more professionals on-board earning per professional decreased

● No work for low rated professionals,
● Additional requests from customers and low ratings to professionals if those are not met.

Issues faced by customers:

● Professionals using fake products

● Electricians and repair persons exaggerating issue to extract money
● No customer care calling number only need help button on app

What UC can do?

● Proper resource allocation using technology

● ‘Retrained’ tag on low rated professionals
● Clearly mention what service will be provided based on the initial diagnosis of problem with the help of technology
● Details of product that will be used can be provided beforehand on the app
● Augmentation in app where if customers will provide details of issue they will get the potential causes already
● A calling number of some supervisor should also be provided with each service request
 On-boarding process of professionals
Demand-Supply Gap

One of the major problems that Urban Company has to

face is that the no. of professionals that available is
lesser than the request for services that come on the
platform.

On an average 60-70% of the professionals deny to join

even after going through such a rigorous selection
process. Unavailability of professionals results into 15-
20% request loss. And during pandemic this number
raised to 40-45% request loss.
 Recommendations

In House Loans Soft Skills Professional

●
Database
Professionals to buy an
● Technical trainers to
initial kit
● Provide loans to the train the professionals
with essential soft ● Conduct some free
professionals from company
skills training sessions for the
side
● professionals who are
Recover from their profit
● currently not a part of
Deduct daily from their
Urban Company
profits Ex-100-120 from Rs Success Stories ● Organize competitions
1000 earned
● for professionals to
Buy the kit on installments.
showcase their skills and
● Having existing local talent
partners share their success

Major Problems identified stories

in Partner onboarding Vehicle Solution

Referral
Incentives
● Tie-up with external
agencies who can provide
low interest loan to partners ● Better leads with increased
awareness and trust
● Would encourage partners to
talk about UC and invite
their contacts to join UC
 Competition from Hyperlocal Services
Local Competitors Challenges

● Barber Shops,Salons,Spa Centers ● Matching Supply and Demand

● Local Electric and Repair shops ● Ensuring Quality of service
● House Painters and cleaners ● User Retention
● Electricians, plumbers, carpenters ● Prices (Additional Fees Charged)
● AC and appliance repair freelancers ● Trust and Satisfaction
● Fitness Centers, yoga studios

Other Competitors Solutions

● Handy ● Diversified Portfolio
● HouseJoy ● One clap service solution
● Quickr ● New techniques in beauty section
● Quicqo ● Ensured Safety
● Zimmber ● Provided discounts to loyal customers
● Helpr
● Timesaverz
User Experience and interaction

Problems
High number of interactions for re-booking of service on platform
Higher checkout time
Solution
Reduce the number of interactions
Improve the original flow of checkout process to reduce checkout time
Older check out flow diagram

Improved checkout flow diagram

 Ensuring Quality Service and Trust
Urban Company provides services in 6 areas which are Urban beauty, Urban Painting, Urban Repairs, Urban Spa, Urban
Grooming and Urban Cleaning.

As all the services are at home there is a lot of emphasis on ensuring Quality service from the personnel

Challenges Ensuring Quality Service

● Training the service professionals ● Using AI, automated facial recognition for
● Customer satisfaction identity verification of professionals
● Sanitization of tools and equipments in front of
● Hygiene and Cleanliness at home
customers
● User retention ● Data encryption and safety, secure payments
● Supply demand mapping ● Single use disposables & sachet products
● Customer Loyalty points & referrals
● Using historic data analysis to forecast number of
customers in the required area and manage the
supply demand gap
 User Retention
● Invest in technology which ensures top notch customer and service provider management
● Service Providers need to be strictly trained on basic etiquette, this should be made
mandatory if they have to provide services to the customers
● A vendor rating system can be introduced which links to the commission deducted for the
service providers or incentivize them for better ratings
● Ensure fast customer redressal in case of errors or mishaps
● Loyalty points can be looked into for customer retention
 Scaling up
Geographies :

● Expand to tier 2 cities in India

● Bring in the full stack model to countries like US and UK

Other ventures:

● Video consultations for beauty needs, remote diagnosis for appliance repairs
● Technology - Screening, on-boarding, training and knitting-out with minimal physical intervention
● A job search platform for blue-collar workers - Screened by UC’s technology but open to hired by others
● Training as a service - Training courses for other professionals online/offline
How to make more money?

- Since Urban Company provides initial kits to professionals in which they provide some own
manufactured appliances and products. They can start selling the same to consumers as well.
- Partnering with companies like paint companies or electrical appliances companies to provide
installation services (In Past UC partnered with Ikea India to provide installation services)
- They can foray into manufacturing and selling of basic electrical appliances (E.g. They started
selling water purifiers)
- Introducing newer categories with huge market potential like on-demand driver services,
catering services, cooks service etc.,
- Start focusing on B2B customers to crack larger contracts for the services provided
Thank You!