Kamal Ghorui
BENGALURU: Urban Company’s push into instant domestic services dragged the company deeper into losses in the March quarter, as the home services platform ramped up spending to compete with fast-growing rivals such as Pronto and Snabbit in the emerging category.The Gurugram-based company reported a consolidated loss of Rs 161 crore for the March quarter, compared with a loss of Rs 2.8 crore a year earlier. Total income rose 40% year-on-year to Rs 462 crore. For FY26, Urban Company reported a loss of Rs 235 crore against a profit of Rs 240 crore a year earlier, while total income rose 34% to Rs 1,692 crore.Its InstaHelp vertical, which offers rapid household cleaning and housekeeping services, posted an adjusted Ebitda loss of Rs 119 crore in Q4 as the company sharply increased spending on customer acquisition, incentives and supply onboarding.Urban Company fulfilled 2.7 million InstaHelp orders in the March quarter, up from 1.6 million in the December quarter, while March alone crossed 1.1 million orders, according to the company’s shareholder letter.“We’re playing to win and not playing to look elegant,” cofounder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal said during the company’s analyst call, adding that Urban Company was willing to stay aggressive in the category despite mounting losses.The comments come as startups such as Pronto and Snabbit rapidly scale app-based domestic help services across metros, betting that Indian households will increasingly shift from informal full-time maids to app-managed, on-demand labour.Bhal said the company views the category as structurally different from quick commerce because of the importance of trust and worker quality. “In businesses of trust, it’s a winner-take-all,” he said. “Whoever wins the supply side of the market will be the winner.”Urban Company said top 10% InstaHelp users now place about eight orders a month, while the top 1% place around 21 orders monthly, indicating the service is moving beyond occasional emergency use.The company also said InstaHelp demand density is becoming unusually concentrated at a neighbourhood level. “InstaHelp’s density is far more granular compared to perhaps any other consumer internet business,” Bhal said.Net order value for InstaHelp fell sequentially to Rs 150 from Rs 172 due to discounts and lower-priced packs, even as the company said customer retention and repeat usage remained strong. Bhal said the current level of competition in the market was still “manageable,” though he acknowledged that companies may need to behave irrationally at times to gain share.Urban Company also indicated it may eventually introduce subscription-style offerings in InstaHelp, similar to what it has rolled out in international markets such as the UAE and Singapore, where users book cleaning services multiple times a week.Despite the aggressive investment cycle, the company maintained its guidance of achieving consolidated adjusted Ebitda breakeven by Q3 FY28. Excluding InstaHelp, Urban Company’s core business remained profitable, with adjusted Ebitda excluding the vertical rising nine-fold to Rs 106 crore for FY26.
