Inside Urban Company’s new algorithmic hustle: less idle time, steadier income

Its first post-listing quarterly results filings on Saturday show that Urban Company's partners’ average active hours per month (excluding its high-frequency vertical Insta Help workers) have surged 51% since FY22—from 59 to 89—buoyed by smarter matching and denser local demand for services including pest control, beauty and grooming, and home repairs.

In its most mature neighbourhoods, the top 5% of service partners are clocking 150 active hours per month, nearly double the platform average.

Urban Company counts active hours as paid work, including travel between appointments, but excludes wait time or simply being online.

Earnings, utilization rise

It said its service partners earned on average a net monthly income of ₹26,400 in FY25 after deductions, though earnings vary sharply by category, geography and season. The company highlighted that the top 20% of partners earned about ₹40,600 a month, while the top 5% made roughly ₹49,000.

“As we densify micro-markets, our service professionals spend less time waiting for jobs or travelling between jobs and more time inside consumers’ homes," said Abhiraj Singh Bhal during the Q2FY26 earnings call on Monday.

The company's system, built to cut idle time and boost worker utilisation, often keeps partners logged in for 8–10 hours for roughly 3 1⁄2 hours of paid work, several workers told Mint. In denser pin codes, some report completing up to 150 hours of paid work a month.

App-driven shifts

For some, that shift has been stark. “Earlier, I’d do two or three big jobs a day and log off," said Neeraj, 35, a pest-control professional in Gurugram. “Now, the app keeps pushing shorter slots. I’m active for only three or four hours, but I’m out for the whole day. If I take a long break, the next booking might not come."

Others describe a similar recalibration of time and control. “Earlier, I could plan my day around two big appointments, and then take on some non-app clients too," said Rekha, 33, who provides at-home salon services in Noida.

“If I switch off for a few hours, I feel like the next good booking won’t come. So, even when there’s no job, I stay online. It feels like waiting is part of the work now."

For some, denser pin codes mean faster and more predictable incomes.

“I’ve clocked 140–150 paid hours a month just before peak summer hits. But it means covering multiple pincodes and being on the app from morning till night. It’s not exactly a fixed shift, but it runs like one," said Sandeep, 31, who repairs air-conditioners in Delhi.

Queries sent to the company on Monday remained unanswered till press time. Shares of the company settled 2% lower at ₹148.60 apiece on the BSE on Tuesday. Urban Company's shares made a stellar debut on the exchanges on 17 September, listing at a premium of over 57% over the issue price of ₹103.

Both Neeraj and Sandeep said they sometimes pass on their mobile numbers to new clients to get repeat work directly, and avoid paying the platform's commission. Rekha, who depends on Urban Company’s grooming gig works, said she avoids sharing her number with the company's clients, although she still serves some older, off-platform customers.

Algorithmic control

The jump in active hours suggests that the algorithmic infrastructure is being used to technocratically chain jobs together by predicting availability and minimizing travel time between appointments, said Abhivardhan, president of the Indian Society of Artificial Intelligence and Law.

Urban Company frames this tech infrastructure as a way to smooth worker income and reduce downtime. Its algorithms optimize scheduling and matching using predictive modelling and dynamic routing, stacking work orders more efficiently across short time slots. This is buoyed by micro-market densification — packing partners and customers into the same neighbourhoods so travel time is compressed, boosting both fulfilment and productivity.

But the same system also creates behavioural incentives that increasingly resemble shift-based work. “The flexibility is there, but it depends on the app’s mood," Rekha said.

This gap between billable hours and total time spent on the platform reflects what researchers call “availability inflation"— the more a professional is available, the more likely they are to be favourably ranked by the algorithm and offered high-quality gigs.

“This increasingly resembles a full-time occupation. While Urban Company advertises flexibility, the underlying system rewards behaviour that mimics traditional shift work," said Sohom Banerjee, senior research associate at CUTS International, who studies platform-work policy.

The Gurugram-headquartered company has also introduced features such as auto-acceptance of jobs, rolled out across several categories, which further streamline scheduling but reduce partner discretion.

Banerjee notes that the company’s trajectory illustrates “a classic productivity curve — where technology enhances labour efficiency by eliminating non-revenue-generating time."

Urban Company’s data shows that service providers can earn ₹280– ₹380 per hour, compared to ₹55– ₹80 in traditional settings like salons or local workshops.

The company's net loss widened to ₹59.3 crore in the September quarter, from ₹1.8 crore a year ago.

New bets on daily services

Much of its investment is being channelled into Insta Help, its high-frequency housekeeping vertical — a shift from occasional, planned services to spontaneous, daily demand. Unlike Urban Company’s traditional once-a-month services like plumbers, carpenters or wedding-specific beauticians, Insta Help offers regular domestic help.

In just eight months, the service scaled to 4.7 lakh monthly orders, but posted an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (Ebitda) loss of ₹44 crore in the quarter ended September.

Urban Company faces fresh competition from Snabbit and Pronto, both chasing the instant home-help segment. Snabbit, founded in 2024, recently raised $30 million at a $180 million valuation, claiming to deploy help within 10 minutes through a 5,000-strong, women-led fleet across five cities. Pronto, also launched in 2024, secured $14 million in August from General Catalyst and Glade Brook Capital to scale its “shift-based" model, which promises reliability by directly controlling the labour supply chain.

But for now, Urban Company is betting that density, frequency and machine-led scheduling will give it an edge as India’s home-services market heats up.