Urban Company rejects women workers allegation, says their earning is fair

Home service marketplace Urban Company on Sunday denied allegations levelled by its women beautician partners of providing very low commission to them and claimed that the earnings are far more than the amount claimed by them.

Over hundreds of working women have protested outside the office of the unicorn start-up in Gurugram alleging abysmally low wages given to them and companies dealing with them in non-transparent manner.

A beautician partner of the company shared a screenshot that she got Rs 67 as payout after providing a service worth Rs 1,626.

“One of the tweets recently claimed that a beauty partner made Rs 67 for 4 orders. This is a mis-representation of facts. The screenshot shown is not that of her earnings page but a settlement ledger of the bank transfer,” Urban Company said in a blog post.

It said that the partner accepted cash payments for 2 orders and online payment for the remaining two.

“Her net earnings after UC commissions and other fees for the 4 orders in question delivered between 13 Oct was Rs 1,941,” UC said.

UC provided a calculation on the cost of service that it offers to users and wage paid to partners from that work.

Paytm founder managing director Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted in support of the clarification provided by the UC around complex cost structure involved in offering low cost services.

UC said that it has always been a platform where both customers and partners are equal stakeholders.

“The very genesis of Urban Company was to organize the home services industry for both customers and partners. In the absence of organized players, the market was controlled by middle-men and aggregators, who restricted market access and kept a lion’s share of the margins.

“However, we believe we have made the industry more transparent, reduced the number of middlemen and given a voice to the hitherto voiceless informal labour,” the blog post said.

It said that under no circumstances, the company will ever shy away from doing the right thing for our stakeholders.

“This has always been reflected in our business decisions and strategy. We are not perfect, and acknowledge that we might have made mistakes in our journey so far. In the coming weeks, we will be announcing some important programs which we believe will further enhance the earnings and well-being of our partner ecosystem,” UC said.

The company claimed that its partners earn a net earnings of Rs 280300 per hour, net of commissions, fee and all associated product and travel costs.

As partners do more orders on the platform, and spend around 100 hours per month working for the platform, they see very healthy earnings of Rs 25,00030,000 per month.

“The top quartile of service partners earn over Rs 36000 per month net of all commissions and costs. Our platform is bouncing back strongly post the second wave, and we expect earnings to be even better in October and the months ahead,” UC said.

The company said that it will publish an update on this blogpost at the end of October with the revised data.

“Our estimates suggest that in the offline world, service professionals earn on average between Rs 12,00015,000 per month,” the post said.

The on-demand home services provider Urban Company in June raised USD 255 million (about Rs 1,857 crore) in funding led by Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, ahead of its plans to launch an IPO in the next two years.

The series F round – which also saw participation from Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview – takes Urban Company”s valuation to USD 2.1 billion.

The company also responded to the product that it provides to its beautician partners.

It said that the company sells products to service professionals. “These products are genuine, branded and at much lower costs than the offline world, with us passing almost all benefits of bulk procurement to our service partners (In FY21, our products business was operated at near 0 per cent net margin at a slight loss, which can be verified through our annual audited financial statements. Needless to say, partners receive physical GST invoices against all products sold),” UC said.

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