Urban Company Partners Now Earn On Par With Entry-Level IT Professionals

Urban Company recorded average net earnings of ₹28,322 per month per active service partners during the nine months period ending FY26, according to recent earnings report. It recorded a 6.9% rise compared with ₹26,489 during the same period last year.

The home services platform listed at the NSE reported earnings information in various levels of partner performance. According to the release, the highest 20% of service professionals had an average monthly income of ₹42,418, with the highest 10% and highest 5% income of ₹47,471 and ₹51,673 respectively.

The earnings report comes during rising levels of regulatory oversight on compensation and benefits on the gig economy in India. Ride-hailing along with food delivery and home services platforms are part of the service sector that has attracted intense criticism from labour groups owing to the unstable earnings and absence of conventional employment security.

According to a report by NITI Aayog, the gig workforce in India has reached about 7.7 million workers as at 2020-21 and is estimated to grow to 23.5 million workers by 2029-30. The earnings and classification of workers is however a controversial topic and discussions continue over whether gig workers should be considered an employee or independent contractors.

According to the company, partners spent an average of 91 hours every month on the platform, including traveling time to services, which equated to about ₹313 per hour. The data does not cover InstaHelp service category, a on demand, quick house help and housekeeping service category.

On Par With IT-Professionals

The Gurugram based startup calculated partner earnings against entry level IT sector salaries, which it estimated as ₹4 lakh per year according to industry data including Glassdoor. Through this comparison, the average Urban Company partner earnings are comparable to IT fresher salaries.

The 20% are earning about 30% more than an average entry-level IT compensation, the 10% are earning about 45% more, and the 5% are earning almost 60% more, the release states.

These platform companies have been criticized to have made selective disclosure of earnings which might not be representative of average labour experience. Critics say that the focus on the highest income earners may also hide adverse conditions of average workers, such as unpredictable access to work, the fee of the platform, and the cost of equipment.

In the announcement, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, the CEO of Urban Company Limited, said that sustained earnings growth is a very important measure of a healthy partner ecosystem. The company attributes the growth in earnings to increasing service demands and platform efficiency.

The platform offers group life and accidental insurance to all its active service partners, which covers life insurance of up to ₹10 lakh, disability cover of up to ₹6 lakh, and accidental hospitalization and OPD treatment, as per company records.

Recently, Urban Company has collaborated with HDFC Pension to enable access to the National Pension System by service professionals. The company has more than 300 full time trainers and training centers in India. The release announced that service professionals are trained in a structured manner through a collaboration with the National Skill Development Corporation and Skill India-certified digital credentials.

The Code on Social Security, 2020, proposed gig worker welfare, such as accident insurance, and contribution to provident funds. Nevertheless, practice is still in the offing, and the states are not fully operationalizing these safeguards.

Service professionals with high performance can move to full-time trainers in the company, which establishes new career development opportunities beyond direct service delivery by the company.

Urban Company is a technology platform that helps customers connect with professionals to provide home and beauty services such as cleaning, repairing, salon, and spa services. The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange where it trades under the URBANCO ticker.

The company did not release the total number of active partners, annual increases in the rate of partner participation, and median earnings, which according to economists are more accurate figures that represent the normal worker income than averages.

The Indian gig economy has been publishing more data on earnings as regulators and advocacy groups have set transparency demands. Nevertheless, no universal reporting measures are operating in the industry and thus, it is hard to compare across platforms.