Brands
Urban Company reports revenue growth but remains in the red in December quarter
MUMBAI: Freshly listed and barely four months into life on Dalal Street, Urban Company, the home services marketplace reported a mixed set of numbers for the quarter ended December 31, 2025, blending brisk top-line growth with stubborn losses and a strategic pivot that signals where its next mop-and-bucket moment may lie.
Revenue from operations rose to Rs 382.68 crore in the December quarter, up sharply from Rs 287.92 crore a year earlier and marginally ahead of the Rs 380.03 crore clocked in the September quarter. Including other income of Rs 36.10 crore, total income stood at Rs 418.78 crore.
Yet expenses continued to outpace earnings. Total costs climbed to Rs 432.83 crore during the quarter, driven by employee benefits of Rs 114.20 crore and other expenses amounting to Rs 232.26 crore. The result was a consolidated loss before tax of Rs 21.05 crore, compared with a profit of Rs 16.38 crore in the same quarter last year.
For the nine months ended December 31, 2025, the story was similar but larger in scale. Revenue from operations reached Rs 1,129.98 crore, a jump from Rs 846.02 crore in the corresponding period a year ago. Total income, including other income of Rs 99.95 crore, stood at Rs 1,229.93 crore. The company reported a consolidated loss of Rs 73.65 crore for the nine-month period, reversing a profit of Rs 242.60 crore in the previous year, largely due to higher costs, new business investments and the absence of deferred tax credits booked earlier.
Digging into segments offers clues about what is working and what is still being scrubbed clean. India consumer services, excluding InstaHelp, remained the mainstay, generating Rs 264.54 crore in quarterly revenue and Rs 798.15 crore over nine months. The Native brand, which sells Urban Company’s own products, delivered Rs 61.77 crore in quarterly revenue and Rs 196.73 crore for the nine months, though it continued to post losses at the segment level.
International business contributed Rs 49.58 crore in the December quarter, while InstaHelp, the company’s rapid daily cleaning service, added Rs 6.79 crore but remained deep in the red, with a quarterly segment loss of Rs 60.91 crore.
The company’s margins were further dented by a warehouse fire in Bhiwandi, Maharashtra, which destroyed inventory worth Rs 9.11 crore during the nine-month period. The stock was insured and a claim has been filed, but the loss still left its mark on the books.
Against this backdrop, Urban Company’s board approved a manufacturing and supply agreement with Amber Enterprises India Limited to produce products under its Native brand. The deal runs until December 2029 and includes an exclusive arrangement for the term plus two additional years, subject to volume commitments. No upfront consideration has been paid, but the agreement is aimed squarely at tightening the supply chain and meeting rising demand.
The board also cleared a series of employee stock option moves, including a top-up to the 2015 Esop scheme, a shift to a trust-based structure and the closure of the 2022 Esop plan. Paid-up equity capital stood at Rs 144.61 crore at the end of December, reflecting the conversion of preference shares ahead of the company’s listing in September 2025.
Urban Company’s listing expenses of Rs 17.10 crore in the quarter served as a reminder that going public is rarely cheap, especially for a company still investing heavily in growth. Finance costs remained modest at Rs 3.11 crore for the quarter, but employee-related costs continued to rise as the platform scales operations across India and overseas.
Auditors Price Waterhouse & Co Chartered Accountants LLP issued an unmodified review opinion on both standalone and consolidated results, noting that some subsidiaries and trusts were not individually reviewed but were not material to the group.
For now, Urban Company sits at an awkward but familiar stage for consumer tech firms. Revenues are rising, brands are being built and supply chains are being secured, but profitability remains a work in progress. Whether its Native push and operational tightening can turn those losses into something shinier will be one clean-up job investors will be watching closely.
Brands
Rakesh Menon joins Paytm as avp – lending
Fintech product leader takes on new role after building digital lending, payments and credit products across fintech ecosystem
MUMBAI: Rakesh Menon has joined Paytm as assistant vice president – lending, taking on a new role focused on strengthening the company’s lending and credit products.
Prior to this, Menon worked at Profectus Capital Pvt Ltd as chief manager – payments based financing and digital lending.
At Profectus, he designed and launched digital credit products for merchants with variable cash flows, including overdraft-linked and revenue-share lending models. He led end-to-end LOS–LMS API integrations with payment partners and aggregators, enabling real-time underwriting, disbursal and repayment workflows.
He also worked on funnel optimisation initiatives using journey analytics, improving onboarding, KYC and disbursal conversion by 35 per cent. He developed ecosystem partnerships for transaction-data-based credit assessment and automated settlement systems, and collaborated with credit and data science teams to strengthen risk models and early delinquency detection.
Menon standardised partner onboarding and API frameworks, reducing go-live timelines by 40 per cent and improving digital scalability.
Before Profectus Capital, he worked at PayU as senior manager – presales lead – enterprise business from August 2022 to August 2023. He set up a national presales function for fintech and digital commerce clients, aligning solutions such as EMI, BNPL, BBPS and offer engines to merchant requirements.
He also helped improve conversion rates by around 15 per cent through merchant persona mapping, demo frameworks and structured sales playbooks, working closely with product and go-to-market teams.
From April 2019 to July 2022, Menon served as business unit head – SMB – direct acquisitions at Worldline, where he built the SMB online payments vertical from scratch. The business scaled to Rs 2,500 crore in annual transaction volume, growing at 45 per cent year-on-year.
During this period, he introduced paperless onboarding processes including eKYC and eSign, developed partner dashboards and CRM automation systems, and integrated platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce and Tally to expand merchant adoption.
Across roles, Menon has worked across digital lending, payments and merchant financing, with experience in product development, ecosystem partnerships, API integrations and fintech-led growth strategies.
At Paytm, he will focus on scaling lending products and strengthening digital credit infrastructure within the company’s financial services ecosystem.
His appointment comes as fintech firms continue to expand their lending and embedded finance offerings in a competitive market.
