Urban Company – Artifex.News

Zomato, Urban Company gig workers embrace NPS, contributing up to ₹5,000 weekly: HDFC Pension’s CEO

admin — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 13:37:00 +0000

HDFC Pension is seeing encouraging early signs from its push into India’s gig economy, with workers increasingly contributing to their National Pension System (NPS) accounts, according to Sriram Iyer, Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Pension.

In an interaction, he said that the company’s partnerships with Zomato and Urban Company have fundamentally changed how it approaches pension adoption among gig workers.

Unlike salaried employees, gig workers do not have an employer-employee relationship with platforms, making conventional pension enrolment difficult, he said.

High and dry: On gig workers, social security

“The big aha moment for us was when we went to Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and said we will need to create a process which is not cumbersome,” Mr. Iyer said, explaining that traditional employer-employee onboarding models were unsuitable for platform workers.

Working with the regulatory, the Central Recordkeeping Agency (a key intermediary in the NPS architecture) and Zomato, he said, HDFC Pension used the e-Shram platform worker framework that gig workers already had to enable onboarding to the aggregator.

“We used that KYC to create the Permanent Retirement Account Number (PRAN). In one shot we were able to create one and half lakh PRANs,” he said.

The company found that merely opening pension accounts was not enough. Most delivery partners, many of whom live “really hand to mouth”, found retirement planning too distant to prioritise.

To improve adoption, he said, they identified influential delivery partners to promote the product internally. The experience also reshaped HDFC Pension’s approach when it partnered with Urban Company, he added.

“What we realised was that… we have to get the person to commit at the time of inception of the account,” Mr. Iyer said, adding that the two commitments included willingness to get enrolled and how much they are willing to contribute.

Instead of opening the account first and seeking contributions later, he said, workers are asked upfront how much they wish to contribute every week. The contribution is then deducted directly from their weekly payouts, as platform workers are paid on a weekly settlement cycle.

According to Mr. Iyer, the approach has yielded unexpectedly strong participation.

“There are people who are contributing ₹5,000 in a week,” he said.

“We called this person to see if he was really clear about what he was getting into?… And he said, ‘I know what I’m doing. I want to contribute ₹20,000 a month.’”

Urban Company’s rollout began in Jaipur before expanding city by city, Iyer said.

“Adoption level in Jaipur is 70% now,” Iyer said, adding that the company is following a phased rollout across Lucknow, Ahmedabad and other cities.

The company said around two lakh PRANs have been created from Zomato’s gig workers and about 500 PRANs from Urban Company.

The pension PFM tied up with Zomato in October last year and in January this year it tied up with Urban Company.

Tech Capabilities

Beyond gig workers, HDFC Pension has built a proprietary platform called NPS Pro over the past two years to reduce onboarding and servicing friction.

Account opening, Mr. Iyer said, has been reduced to “a three-minute process,” using pre-populated data and direct integration with the record-keeper to generate a permanent retirement account number.

The platform also automates two previously manual tasks: migrating accounts between retail and corporate registries or across record-keepers, and monthly contribution processing, which previously required nodal officers to manually reconcile active and inactive accounts.

On Artificial Intelligence, Mr. Iyer said current use is focused on customer-facing tools such as calculators and personalised nudges, along with AI-enabled customer service, rather than fraud detection or risk management, which he described as still “early days.”

HDFC Pension is also evaluating startups to enhance its tech capabilities through its parent group’s incubation programme, though Mr. Iyer said no formal agreements are in place yet.

He said the larger priority for the industry is not fund-management performance but expanding the number of people saving through NPS. “This can potentially be a huge… source of patient capital,” he said.

Published – August 02, 2026 06:45 pm IST

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Urban Company shares make strong market debut; jump over 57% over issue price

admin — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 06:00:00 +0000

The company plans to use funds raised through the fresh issuance for new technology development and cloud infrastructure, lease payments for its offices, marketing activities, and general corporate purposes. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Shares of app-based beauty and home services platform Urban Company Ltd on Wednesday (September 17, 2025) listed with a premium of 57.52% over the issue price of ₹103.

The company’s stock started trading at ₹161, a jump of 56.31% from the issue price on the BSE. Later, it zoomed 73.78% to ₹179.

At the NSE, the stock listed with a premium of 57.52% at ₹162.25.

The company’s market valuation stood at ₹24,216.49 crore.

The initial public offer of Urban Company Ltd received overwhelming investor participation, with the issue getting a huge 103.63 times subscription on the final day of bidding on Friday (September 12) last week.

The 1,900-crore IPO had a price band of ₹98-103 per share.

Urban Company operates a technology-driven, full-stack online marketplace for quality-driven services and solutions across various home and beauty categories. Apart from India, it has a presence in the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Its platform enables consumers to easily order services, including cleaning, pest control, electrical work, plumbing, carpentry, appliance servicing and repair, painting, skincare, hair grooming, and massage therapy.

Published – September 17, 2025 11:30 am IST

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Urban Company IPO fully booked hours after opening for bidding; ends with 3.13 times subscription

admin — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:18:00 +0000

Photo: X/@urbancompany_UC

The initial public offer of app-based beauty and home services platform Urban Company Ltd got fully subscribed hours after opening for bidding on Wednesday (September 10, 2025) and later ended the day with 3.13 times subscription.

The IPO received bids for 33,37,87,825 shares against 10,67,73,244 shares on offer, translating into 3.13 times subscription, as per NSE data.

Retail Individual Investors (RIIs) part got subscribed 7 times, and the non-institutional investors portion received 4.16 times subscription.

The Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) category fetched 1.31 times subscription.

Urban Company on Tuesday raised ₹854 crore from anchor investors.

The company’s ₹1,900 crore Initial Public Offering (IPO) will remain open for subscription till September 12 in the price band of ₹98-103 per share.

At the upper end of the price band, the company’s valuation is pegged at ₹14,790 crore.

The Gurugram-based company plans to raise ₹472 crore through selling new shares, and existing investors plan to sell stakes worth ₹1,428 crore.

Those selling shares under the offer for sale (OFS) route are Accel India and Elevation Capital, Bessemer India Capital Holdings II Ltd, Internet Fund V Pte Ltd and VYC11 Ltd.

Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Morgan Stanley India Company, Goldman Sachs (India) Securities and JM Financial are the book-running lead managers to the issue.

Published – September 10, 2025 05:48 pm IST

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Urban Company’s ₹1,900 crore IPO to open on September 10; sets price band at ₹98-103 per share

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 05:45:00 +0000

Urban Company’s maiden public offering will be open for subscription during September 10-12, and the bidding for anchor investors will open for a day on September 9. | Photo: Screengrab via X/@urbancompany_UC

Urban Company, the mobile app-based beauty and home services platform, on Wednesday (September 3, 2025) fixed a price band of ₹98 to ₹103 per share for its upcoming ₹1,900 crore Initial Public Offering (IPO).

At the upper end of the price band, the company’s valuation is pegged at ₹14,790 crore.

Urban Company’s maiden public offering will be open for subscription during September 10-12, and the bidding for anchor investors will open for a day on September 9, the company announced.

The Gurugram-based company plans to raise ₹472 crore through selling new shares, and existing investors plan to sell stakes worth ₹1,428 crore.

Those selling shares under the Offer For Sale (OFS) route are Accel India and Elevation Capital, Bessemer India Capital Holdings II Limited, Internet Fund V Pte. Limited and VYC11 Limited.

Its platform enables consumers to easily order services, including cleaning, pest control, electrician, plumbing, carpentry, appliance servicing and repair, painting, skincare, hair grooming and massage therapy.

These services are delivered by trained and independent service professionals at the consumers’ convenience.

The company said that 75% of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 15% for non-institutional investors and the remaining 10% for retail investors.

Further, investors can bid for one lot of 145 shares and then in multiples of 145 thereafter.

Kotak Mahindra Capital Company, Morgan Stanley India Company, Goldman Sachs (India) Securities and JM Financial are the book-running lead managers to the issue. Urban Company is expected to make its stock market debut on September 17.

On Tuesday (September 2, 2025), an update on SEBI’s website showed that the company had received the market regulator’s approval to launch its maiden public issue.

Published – September 03, 2025 11:15 am IST

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