Are You Being Served?

In barely five years, Bhal, Khaitan, and Chandra have made home services marketplace UrbanClap the go-to platform for urban Indians looking for anything from pedicures to painting houses.

- Arnika Thakur

KANCHAN HAS BEEN IN THE beauty business since she was 15. Last December, the 40-year-old returned to India after a three-year stint as a beautician in Dubai on account of her daughter’s education and family. Though she’d worked with several high-end Delhi salons such as Toni&Guy in the past, she chose a different path this time: Instead of working full-time with a salon, she decided to sign up with digital home services platform UrbanClap Technologies on her sister’s recommendation.

She says she now takes three to four jobs a day on the platform to meet her target of making 1 lakh a month. “A job ties you up. This gives you a lot of freedom. And everyone likes to earn money,” she tells Fortune India at one of UrbanClap’s training centres in south Delhi.

“I like that the harder I work, the more benefits I reap.”

Ashzad Khan’s story isn’t very different. The AC technician, who worked for companies such as Voltas and Daikin before joining UrbanClap as a freelancer, says he used to make 15,000 a month earlier. But his earnings have gone up dramatically to almost 1 lakh before expenses, working three to four gigs a day through UrbanClap. The technician from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, who supports a family of five, came to Delhi to do a polytechnic course more than a decade ago. He was unable to find a job in his hometown, pushing him to live in Delhi. Now, he plans to spend the next decade working with UrbanClap.