After Zomato, Redbus and Cleartrip, it is UrbanClap’s turn to sell its services on Snapdeal

Tuesday May 10, 2016 , 3 min Read

After Zomato, Redbus and Cleartrip, e-commerce biggie Snapdeal has integrated with UrbanClap inventories to launch personal services category.

The announcement was made on Sunday by Anand Chandrasekaran, Chief Product Officer, Snapdeal

Through this integration, more than 80 services of Urban Clap will be now available on Snapdeal Android app.

In March 2016, Snapdeal was seen piloting with this integration as the company tied up with Redbus, Zomato and Cleartrip allowing customers to book travel tickets and order food online. Through sharing their APIs and integrating, these companies get an inroad into Snapdeal’s wider customer base with the e-commerce giant charging a certain commission on the bookings made from their app.

Further, this not just helps Snapdeal to diversify its revenue source but also helps its subsidiary FreeCharge to streamline the payments through their platform.

Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal have invested in UrbanClap in their individual capacities. As of February 2016, the UrbanClap platform was operational in 7 cities, with over 36,000 professionals, receiving over 5000 customer requests each day.

Newer revenue streams

Snapdeal has reported a loss of Rs 1,328 crore for the year ended in March 2015. The six year old company is dipping its hands in multiple avenues for revenue generation and multiplying transactions.

Urbanclap founders (from L-to-R): Abhiraj Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra

Snapdeal is selling the following products/services on its platform:

Automobiles: Within the first six months of its partnership with Hero MotoCorp, Snapdeal sold more than 3 lakh bikes. The platform allowed customers to pay the initial booking amount of Rs 3000 with loan approvals within 2 minutes of the vehicle purchase.

Food: Through flash sale of Maggi products to partnerships with chef Sanjeev Kapoor, the e-tailer is now making even online food deliveries possible through Zomato.

Homes: Recently, the company tied up with real estate developers such as TVS Emerald, Provident Housing and Runwal Group to launch real estate and financial services on its website. Customers can book flats at a minimum refundable booking amount of Rs 10,000.

According to Rahul Taneja, VP, Category Management, Snapdeal

During Diwali sales (last year), the average value of each home sold was Rs 55 lakhs. We also sold a penthouse worth Rs 6 crore last year which was unthinkable a few years back

Loans: In 2015, Snapdeal announced its exclusive partnership with State Bank of India for its dealers. Today, it offers education, home and personal loans to its customers as well as sellers.

Not the only one

In the past, media reports suggested that e-commerce marketplaces (including Snapdeal) are unable to raise funds at their preferred valuations. This has put added pressure on these e-tailers to look at other avenues of revenue generation and expansion.

But Snapdeal is not the only one adopting this strategy, there is Paytm which has also started similar third party service integrations allowing users to book air and bus tickets. Then, there is Flipkart’s logistics service eKart which is tying up with smaller players to cater to their logistics needs. In the current fiscal year, eKart plans to tie up with as many as 50 offline players. Flipkart also experimented with its grocery marketplace Nearby from October 2015, but had to shut the service down in February this year.