What should Urban Company do?

Evil, manipulative, unscrupulous. These are a few of the allegations levelled by the startup’s service partners. Its future depends on the choices it makes now.

24 January, 202217 min
0
What should Urban Company do?

Why read this story?

Editor's note: If you go by the sheer number of reports, it would seem like the world is turning against Urban Company. Even the most loyal service partners, who worked hard over the years to make the company a household name, are up in arms. Seema Singh, who closed her own beauty parlour in 2017 to work with Urban Company, is one of them. The 35-year-old has become the face of the unrest. She is the first among four defendants named in a lawsuit—a copy of which has been reviewed by The Morning Context—filed by the home services company after protests in December. Singh has since left the platform. Gunjan Chaudhary, another beautician, who has been with Urban Company for over four years and had to relocate to Gurugram, is also protesting. So are hundreds of other partners in the spa and salon category of services. The company likes to portray the problem as being limited to the beauty vertical and the National Capital Region, but that is not true. A deep discontent is simmering among electricians, plumbers and other gig workers …

You may also like

Internet
Story image

A changing country: inside India’s instant house help moment

Snabbit, Pronto and Insta Help are pulling in users with speed and low prices. We begin by asking the most basic question: who is this service really for?

Internet
Story image

Swiggy sounds the alarm bells on quick commerce

Amid an irrational competition brewing in India’s quick-commerce sector, the food and grocery delivery company seems to be taking a far more conservative approach compared to its peers, despite having Rs 16,000 crore in the bank.

Internet
Story image

Eternal, startups and playing the long game

In a country beset with problems, there is always something better to do. How about your duty to your shareholders first? Separately, Urban Company’s latest quarterly results show fatigue