Urban Company, India’s largest home services platform, stormed onto the public markets on Wednesday, opening 58% above its issue price after delivering the country’s most subscribed IPO of the year.
The Gurugram-based startup, which connects users to at-home services ranging from beauty treatments to appliance repair, debuted on the Mumbai-based National Stock Exchange at ₹162.25 per share (approximately $1.84), up from its IPO issue price of ₹103. The offering, which opened last week, was subscribed over 100 times, meaning investors placed orders for 100 times more shares than were available, signaling robust demand from both institutional and retail investors.
Urban Company’s public listing has also served as a partial exit opportunity for its early backers, with Accel reaping the largest gains, followed by Elevation Capital and Tiger Global. Accel, which invested at an average cost of ₹3.61 per share, is sitting on potential profits of nearly 45x, while Elevation, with an entry price of ₹5.39 per share, stands to make around 30x and Tiger Global is looking at comparatively modest gains, reportedly around 1.3 times its cost basis.
One of the key reasons behind Urban Company’s success over the past decade has been its ability to organize traditionally unorganized household services in India — including cleaning, plumbing, electrical work, massage, and beauty treatments. By digitizing these offerings through its app, the company has created an on-demand platform in a market that lacked standardization. In that sense, Urban Company enjoys a near monopoly, remaining the largest organized player in this space.
Before kicking off the $217 million public offering, Urban Company raised $97 million from anchor investors, including Goldman Sachs, Dragoneer Investment Group, Norges Bank, GIC, Nomura Amundi Funds, Steadview Capital, Prosus, and WhiteOak. Domestic mutual funds including SBI Mutual Fund, ICICI Prudential, Nippon, and UTI also participated in the pre-IPO secondary round.
Founded in November 2014 as UrbanClap by Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra, Urban Company operates in 59 cities across four countries, including India, the UAE, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia — with India remaining its largest market so far. The company plans to enter more than 200 cities by the end of fiscal year 2030 to expand the reach of its household services.
Urban Company aims to utilize the net proceeds primarily for technology development and cloud infrastructure, along with lease payments for office spaces and marketing initiatives.
