Urban Company rejects workers’ claim, says their pay is fair

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Home services market Urban Company on Sunday denied claims by its esthetician partners that they provided them with a very low commission and claimed that the revenues were far greater than the amount claimed by them.

More than hundreds of female workers protested outside the unicorn startup’s office in Gurugram, alleging the extremely low wages they receive and the companies that deal with them in a non-transparent manner.

A beauty therapist partner of the company shared a screenshot showing that she received Rs 67 as payment 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 misrepresentation of the facts. The screenshot shown is not of her earnings but a bank transfer settlement register, “Urban Company said. in a blog post.

He said the partner accepts cash payments for 2 orders and online payment for the other two.

“His net profit after UC commissions and other charges for the 4 orders in question delivered between Oct. 13 were Rs 1,941,” UC said.

UC has provided a calculation on the cost of the service it provides to users and the salary paid to partners for this work.

The CEO of Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted in support of the clarification provided by UC regarding the complex cost structure involved in delivering low-cost services.

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

“The very genesis of Urban Company was to organize the home service industry for customers and partners. In the absence of organized players, the market was controlled by middlemen and aggregators, who restricted the 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 work,” the blog said.

He said that in no case will the company ever shy away from doing the right thing for our stakeholders.

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

The company claimed that its partners earn a net income of 280,300 rupees per hour, net of commissions, fees and all associated products and travel expenses.

As partners place more orders on the platform and spend around 100 hours per month working for the platform, they are seeing very healthy income of Rs 25,000,000 per month.

“The top quartile of service partners earn over Rs 36,000 per month net of all commissions and fees. Our platform is rebounding strongly after wave two, and we expect profits to be even better in October and in the next few months. months to come, ”UC said.

The company said it will post an update on this blog at the end of October with the revised data.

“Our estimates suggest that in the offline world, service professionals earn on average between 12,000 and 15,000 rupees per month,” the post said.

On-demand home service provider Urban Company raised $ 255 million (around Rs. 1,857 crore) in June under the leadership of Prosus Ventures, Dragoneer and Wellington Management, ahead of its intention to launch an IPO during the next two years.

The Series F cycle – which also saw participation from Vy Capital, Tiger Global and Steadview – brings Urban Company’s valuation to $ 2.1 billion.

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

He said the company sells products to service professionals. “These products are genuine, branded, and cost much less than the offline world. , which can be verified in our annual audited financial statements. Needless to say, partners receive physical invoices from TPS for all products sold), ”UC said.

(Only the title and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)

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