Kalyan Krishnamurthy backs home service marketplace UrbanClap

After raising series D round, home service marketplace Urbanclap has raised Rs 1.6 crore from Flipkart’s Group CEO - Kalyan Krishnamurthy. This is not the first instance where Krishnamurthy has invested in a growth stage startup.

Previously, Krishnamurthy invested in industrial tools and equipment marketplace Moglix, fitness and health tech company Curefit, Goodera, Unacademy and NestAway.

According to RoC filing with MCA, the share price for the round stood at Rs 51,552 which is significantly lower from its Series D round when its share was valued Rs 68,737 each. At that time it was valued at about $442 million.

Backed by Accel, Ratan Tata, SAIF Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Urbanclap claims 15,000 service professionals across 8 cities in the country as well as Dubai.

So far, the Gurugram-based company had raised $110 million in total funding. At present, the biggest segment on UrbanClap is beauty services, followed by appliance repairs, and house cleaning services.

The Abhiraj Bhal-led firm is the only startup to attract a consistent flow of investment and make a dent in home service space. More than a dozen companies had to shut shop owing to lack of investor’s interest and poor unit economics.

Existing number 2 player - Amazon-backed Housejoy also has been struggling and scaling down operations.

As similar as other growth and late-stage consumer Internet firms, losses of UrbanClap are higher than the revenue of the company.

However, it had an improved FY18  as its revenue took a 3.2X jump in FY18 to Rs 53.48 crore. The company also reduced losses by about 16 per cent to Rs 56.49 crore in FY18 from Rs 67.18 crore figure in the preceding fiscal.