Bessemer Leads $25 Million Funding In Services Marketplace UrbanClap

BENGALURU: UrbanClap, a mobile-based services marketplace, has raised $25 million in a series B round of funding led by Silicon Valley venture fund Bessemer Venture Partners, an early backer of Skype and Pinterest, along with participation from existing investors SAIF Partners and Accel Partners.

The Gurgaon-based startup lets users book plumbers, beauticians, Yoga instructors among 75 such services across Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Pune. Started in October last year by Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra, UrbanClap had so far raised $12 million in risk capital."By the same time next year, we are aiming to have over 200,000 professionals on the platform and serve over 100,000 customers every day," said Bhal. 

The company plans to extend its offering to 25 cities in over 100 categories over the next one year with the latest financing in place. It also plans to hire an additional 300 people taking the its headcount to 600.Investors had rushed to fund a clutch of early-stage online marketplaces in the local and home services space earlier this year with the likes of Taskbob, Tiger Global-backed LocalOye, Housejoy raising money. 

However, over the past few months with the market tightening this category has seen some players unable to shore up further capital while others lke LocalOye laid off employees to cut costs paving way for consolidation.UrbanClap's Khaitan said they were about five times bigger than all other players on every metric with an annual gross merchandise value or GMV of $ 200 million and 5,000 customer requests coming in per day with an average order size of Rs 7000. It is no surprise that we have also raised five-six times more capital than anyone else, he said.Vishal Gupta, MD of Bessemer Venture Partners said, "We are impressed with how the UrbanClap team has aggressively built this mobile marketplace in a short period of time, and a capital efficient manner to become the industry leader. As they launch city after city, they are creating micro-entrepreneurs across service categories.

Source : techgignews.com