Another round of applause

Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra have got the second bite of the cherry with Urban Clap. Their first ventures—Buggi for Chandra, and Cinema Box for Bhal and Khaitan—did not do well.

But UrbanClap, a handyman and personal service app, has had a different story. Founded in 2014, the startup offers over 100 services, ranging from beauty and salon to home repair to wedding planning, at the convenience of your doorstep.

With a presence in eight metropolitan cities in India, the Gurgaon-based company recently went global by entering Dubai.

“We are quite excited,” says 31-year-old Bhal, co-founder Urban Clap. Service commerce is very large in Dubai, but almost all of it is completely offline, so it does create a good opportunity for us to both take it online and standardise it.”

In India, Bahl says, the startup has seen maximum traction in services such as beauty, appliance, and home repair. The other emerging categories are home improvement such as painting, and fitness services. “We want to get deeper into these categories this year,” he says.

UrbanClap has nearly 1 lakh service professionals registered on its platform. To maintain standards and quality of services offered, Bhal says they have a strong scrutinisation process, and typically if five people apply, only one gets selected.

“We do a detailed background check, train them and make sure that if they fall below a certain rating, they are removed from the platform,” he explains.

The last funding of the company with a team of over 400 professionals came in 2017 and totalled $60 million. UrbanClap will expand to Chandigarh and Jaipur this year.

Find the 40 under 40, 2018 list here

The annual Fortune India 40 under 40 event takes place in Bengaluru on April 29.