co want to work with a broader range of businesses think of caterers for example to try and evolve food into something of a utility we eventually want breakfast to arrive automatically at a customers doorstep like the newspaper and milk it should become a preordered set up with little headache for the customer he says then swiggy wants to use some part of the funding it has raised to jointly set up serviceonly kitchens for these joints to tap areas where they get plenty of orders from but are relatively geographically distant majety believes swiggy can use its growing base of customer orders and to build a personalised interface for individual customers and help them make informed choices like music movies and books people usually have barely 30 minutes to eat a meal people are happy to get help with their choices says majety and the profit imperative profitability is a goal post it doesnt have to be immediate he adds urbanclap wants to provide reliable services abhiraj bhal cofounder of urbanclap three times a week the founders of urbanclap a delhibased local services provider say they receive requests from stricken rivals who want to be acquired backed by some 37 million in funding from the likes of bessemer venture partners saif and accel the company founded just two years ago has become the categorys proverbial 800pound gorilla urbanclap works with some 25000 service providers in eight cities and its founders say it processes 40005000 customer requests daily rather than focus on just providing lowvalue lowrepeat services think of the odd plumbing job the startup has sought to fatten its business by providing a wider assortment of offerings so among its services providers are wedding photographers interior designers and birthday partyplanners we are trying to address a basic problem that millions of indians face says cofounder abhiraj bhal the access to highquality reliable service providers remains an unmet challenge along with groceries and budget hotels bhal believes services will form the next logical growth driver for indias thriving ecommerce market according to bhal the addressable market for their services is around 100 million indian middle class folk across the top 25 cities we are six or seven times as large as our nearest competitor he adds we will work with 200000 service providers by the end of 2016 and we will handle 100000 customer requests a day in some ways urbanclap is following the trends in the broader ecommerce market where large players such as flipkart are dominant in apparel for example it does more business than its categoryfocused rivals and the same holds true in the services market the vertical services providers are stuck with lowfrequency lowvalue offeringsin a difficult market they will struggle bhal argues bhal and the other cofounders are acutely aware of the challenges of starting up prior to urbanclap bhal cofounded a company that aimed at providing videoondemand services to longrange public transport while the idea sounded promising and initial interest strong the business