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Failed in his first startup, built a 16,100 CR company after, IPO oversubscribed by 109 times. 1. After completing his electrical engineering at IIT Kanpur and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, Abhiraj Singh Bahl began his career as a strategic consultant at Boston Consulting Group. For three years, he had advised Fortune 500 companies, yet he thought something else. 🤔 2. He wanted to start something of his own. With a former colleague (Varun), he started a movie streaming app (CinemaBox), but it failed. Down but not out, he started looking for ideas and found another friend (Raghav). 3. And finally it came to him. It was challenging to find a service professional, such as a plumber or a beautician, in metro cities. Even if you found someone, reliability, quality, and transparency in pricing were always uncertain. He wanted to solve this. In September 2014, UrbanClap was born. 🚀 4. Abhiraj started visiting door-to-door and put in Rs 4000 on Facebook Ads to test demand. And then he realised his model was completely wrong. Offering every service gave them no repeat users, and he had no funding to continue. He had to find an answer or Urbanclap would shut. 🤔 5. He pivoted to high-frequency categories like home cleaning and beauty, alongside giving training, uniform and insurance to give service standardisation. By 2016, UrbanClap had scaled to 20,000 service professionals in 10 cities with 5 CR in bookings. ✅ 6. UrbanClap raised 165 CR by Besemmer, Accel and Elevation, and Abhiraj kept giving financing to his service professionals and dedicated service lines to customers. As it scaled to 8 cities with 3 million customers, it raised 370 CR led by Vy Capital at a valuation of 2810 CR. 📈 7. By April 2018, UrbanClap worked with over 20,000 trained professionals and became India's largest home services platform. It had also opened doors globally and expanded in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. By August 2019, it raised 522 CR led by Tiger Global. 💰 8. Even COVID-19 could not stop them as it gave a safety standard certificate to customers. As it crossed 5 million customers, it expanded to Australia and Singapore and changed its name in January 2020. Urban Company was born. 🚀 9. Urban Company held - Urban Beauty, Urban Spa, Urban Grooming, Urban Cleaning, all under one umbrella. By April 2021, it had grown to 307 CR in revenue and raised 1420 CR, led by Naspers. It became the 12th unicorn of 2021, valued at 16,100 CR. 🦄 10. The only step was now to go public. On 10th September 2025, Urban Company hit the floor with its 1900 CR IPO and saw bids oversubscribed by a record 109x. It became the most oversubscribed IPO in 2025. 🙌 11. Today, Urban Company works with 51,000 service professionals in 59 cities across India and four countries globally. It has served over 1.3 CR customers to date. 💪 ➡️ When everyone said home services is a dead and boring industry, Abhiraj Singh Bahl built the most successful startup IPO in India under it! 🙏 hashtag#startups hashtag#india