How Urban Company turned the tables on Snabbit |
On a regular February afternoon, a woman in Urban Company’s indigo-blue uniform came knocking on this reporter’s door.
“We are from Urban’s Instahelp,” she announced. “The company has launched domestic-worker services at Rs 99 per hour. If you help me with your number, I will give you a discount of Rs 100. Our three visits will then cost just Rs 198,” she said, ready to note down details.
A month later, the same service—three one-hour sessions of cleaning, doing dishes, or ironing—is simply being offered for Rs 66 per hour. It looks like the discount bloodbath has finally caught up with the home-services market, after going through cabsNDTVThe Case Of Uber Vs Ola, Both Burning Millions Of Dollars From Investors, food deliveryNDTVIndia’s Food Delivery Apps Navigate Discounts, Losses In Race For Customers, and ecommerceThe Economic TimesFlipkart India revenue touches Rs 50,000 crore, losses widen 40% to Rs 3,404 crore in FY22.
But ironically enough, the fuse was lit not by market leader Urban Company, but by plucky upstart Snabbit, which launched its app in September 2024. Four months later, Urban jumped in with Instahelp, and another three months in, Gurugram-based Pronto joined the fray.
Following Urban’s lead, the startups haven’t wasted time in slashing their own prices. Snabbit now charges Rs 198 for the first three visits, while Pronto has simply given up on the arithmetic, charging Re 1 for the first visit, and Rs 25 for 30 minutes thereafter.
And consumers are loving it.
Urban’s Instahelp has seen orders jump from 6,000 in the March 2025 quarter to 1.6 million as of December. Come February, here’s where the chips have fallen: Instahelp led the pack with 840,000 orders that month, Snabbit followed closely with 830,000, and Pronto came in a distant third at 340,000.
In a recent press release, Urban noted that it had taken the company’s core consumer business in India—beauty, plumbing, electrical work—six years to hit the daily run rate that Instahelp had unlocked in just a year.