Urban Company acquires Australia’s on-demand beauty startup Glamazon

Home service marketplace Urban Company (previously UrbanClap) has acquired Sydney-based on-demand beauty startup Glamazon. This comes almost 6 months after the Tiger Global-backed firm launched operations in Australia in November focusing on home care and personal care services including hair and beauty services.

Glamazon has rebranded itself under Urban Company as part of this transaction. However, the deal size couldn’t be ascertained.

Acquiring Glamazon, a real-time booking platform for salons, freelance stylists and beauticians, will consolidate Urban Company’s position in the on-demand home service market in Australia.

Four-year-old Glamazon will see co-founder Lisa Maree exiting the company, while the other founder Lauren Silvers will lead the branding and marketing for Urban Company in Australia.

Maree and Silvers had launched Glamazon after merging their startups. Prior to this acquisition, the company had raised over $1.2 million in funding and aggregated around 1,700 professionals on the platform.

On the other hand, Urban Company has already forayed into its third overseas market after the UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi) and Singapore. The Abhiraj Bhal-led firm has over 25,000 service professionals on its platform, serving around 800,000 services a month in 22 cities.

The soonicorn operates more than 100 classroom training centres and has built an in-house team of 150 full-time trainers, who train between 3,000 to 5,000 professionals a month.

Last year, Urban Company had also shut down its all non-core businesses such as wedding services and photography.

To back its professional partners, the Gurugram- based firm has tied up with several NBFCs and insurance provider ACKO to provide them loan as well as insurance.

As of now, it offers accidental insurance and planning to provide health insurance cover to select professionals. 

Backed by the likes of Accel Partners, Steadview Capital and Vy Capital, Urban Company had also acquired after-sales service platform HandyHome and Delhi-based concierge startup GoodService in 2016.