Before organised platforms emerged, India’s home services market operated almost entirely through informal labour.Customers routinely allowed unknown service providers into their homes without background checks, fixed pricing, or accountability. Price negotiations happened inside the home, disputes were common, and incidents of theft or impersonation were not rare.This made home services a high-fraud category. One poor experience could permanently stop repeat usage. The core barrier was not discovery or convenience. It was fear. Trust was not an add-on feature. It had to be the product itself.Why early marketplaces failedMost early platforms followed a thin marketplace model. They listed professionals, facilitated bookings, and relied on ratings to manage quality. This scaled supply quickly but left trust largely unmanaged. Ratings were easy to game, onboarding checks were superficial, and impersonation at the doorstep remained a major risk.Urban Company took a different route. Instead of maximising listings, it focused on controlling quality end to end. The company moved from being a simple intermediary to a full-stack operator, owning onboarding, training, verification, and post-service accountability.This slowed growth and increased costs, but it directly addressed the trust deficit in the category.Turning vetting into a trust signalUrban CompanyUrban Company treated onboarding as a filtration process, not a… Read MoreYourStory RSS Feed
