Episode Description

In Episode 3 (part 1) of Summit Series, Mridul Arora (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Abhiraj Bhal (Co-founder and CEO, Urban Company) on the journey of building a global home-services company out of India.

Urban Company was founded in November 2014. In less than seven years, the company has delivered 25 million+ home services and empowered 35,000+ service professionals to run their own businesses across varied categories, such as beauty, cleaning, plumbing, carpentry, and appliance repair.

Abhiraj speaks about his journey of transitioning from consulting to the start-up world, his advice to founders on fundraising, Urban Company’s value system, and global aspirations, and more. He also talks about how TAM for a category-defining company will always be an open question.

Episode Summary

00:13 - Introduction

03:08 - Starting up and leaving the consulting world

07:18 - Focusing on solving the broken home-services experience for consumers

09:33 - Developing a framework to evaluate start-up ideas

17:30 - Reflecting on if UC is a customer-first or a partner-first business

25:25 - Making the decision to pivot to a full-stack model

28:04 - Ensuring that the question on TAM is always open for discussion

33:26 - Realizing Urban Company’s ambition to be a global category-defining company

37:25 - Abhiraj’s advice to early-stage founders on fundraising