After Moglix, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy bets big on UrbanClap

Walmart-owned Flipkart’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kalyan Krishnamurthy has put Rs 1.6 crore in UrbanClap, the Gurugram-based home services start-up. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who has earlier invested in startups such as Moglix, CureFit, Tiger Global-backed NestAway, Sequoia-backed edtech startup Unacademy, etc., has now invested in UrbanClap. He will also act as an advisor to UrbanClap.  According to RoC filings, the price per share for this round stood at Rs 51,552, for a total of 310 equity shares. Prior to this investment, the startup had raised funding of $50 million in a Series D round from Steadview Capital Management and existing investor Vy Capital in November 2018. UrbanClap will also see a list of existing marquee investors like SAIF Partners, Ratan Tata, Accel Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners. They have also recently announced that Bollywood star Ayushmann Khurrana is its brand ambassador.

UrbanClap, which was founded in 2014, offers services at home for its customers. UrbanClap is recognized as the fastest-growing startup in India, a mobile marketplace for local services to help customers hire trusted professionals for all their service needs. Be it getting a plumbing job done, improving your fitness through yoga, learning to play the guitar, decorating your home or getting candid photos of your wedding clicked, UrbanClap is a sure shot destination for all your service needs. In almost five years in the business, the startup has garnered more than 35,000 trusted and verified professionals on the platform that serve more than 500,000 customers each month, across 10 cities in India (including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune). The startup also made its international debut by expanding its offerings into Dubai.

Flipkart, on the other hand, was founded in October 2007 by Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, who were both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and formerly worked for Amazon. The company initially focused on online book sales with country-wide shipping. The service competes primarily with Amazon’s Indian subsidiary and the domestic rival Snapdeal] as of March 2017, Flipkart held a 39.5% market share of India’s e-commerce industry. Flipkart is significantly dominant in the sale of apparel (a position that was bolstered by its acquisitions of Myntra and Jabong) and was described as being “neck and neck” with Amazon in the sale of electronics and mobile phones.  Flipkart also owns PhonePe, a mobile payments service based on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In August 2018, U.S.-based retail chain Walmart acquired a 77% controlling stake in Flipkart for US$16 billion, valuing it at $22 billion.

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