Two by Two

Can Urban Company avoid BigBasket’s fate?


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Urban Company has spent years building trust as the go-to platform for home services. But a new generation of founders is now using the Zepto playbook to target its most profitable segments. On Two by Two this week, Praveen Gopal Krishnan and Rohin Dharmakumar are joined by Arpit Agarwal, a partner at Blume Ventures.

The conversation explores the wedge strategy: how specialized startups like Snabbit and Dazzl are driving deep into specific categories like household help and beauty services. Arpit explains why horizontal giants are often wired like sloths, making it difficult for them to stay nimble when a fast moving dragonfly startup attacks a single category.

The hosts also discuss the operational shift from scheduled slots to instant supply. They look at how these new players are treating human labor as an engineering problem, using heat maps and demand prediction to promise services in minutes. But can you actually standardize a home cleaning or a cooking service without losing quality?

It is a deep dive into the battle for your living room and whether efficiency will eventually take over brand loyalty.
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This episode of was produced by Uddantika Kashyap and mixed and mastered by Rajiv CN, our resident sound engineer.

If you liked this episode of Two by Two, please share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone else who might be interested. And if you have thoughts on the discussion, write to us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

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