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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
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.
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 …
The online storytelling company is betting that content will be the most sought-after commodity as scores of platforms jump on the microdrama bandwagon. But success will hinge on whether it has a good enough story to draw the audience.
SEBI has lowered the bar for loss-making startups to list. In that context, a company like Zepto redefines the meaning of risk in public market investing.
The 15-year-old company has bought one brand after another in the hope of growing fast. That plan has fallen flat on its face, but there’s no stopping Wingreens.
