'Not the ideal position': Mukul Arora of Elevation Capital on Snabbit and Urban Company battling for...

'Not the ideal position': Mukul Arora of Elevation Capital on Snabbit and Urban Company battling for instant home services

As competition intensifies between instant home services startups Snabbit and Urban Company's Insta Help, Elevation Capital has acknowledged the unusual position of backing both companies, with co-managing partner Mukul Arora admitting it is "not the ideal position" for the venture capital firm to be in.

To be sure, Elevation first backed Urban Company in 2015 and then again invested in the firm through Elevation Holdings, its late-stage arm in July/August 2025. Snabbit, on the other hand, is a more recent investment through Elevation's early-stage arm (Elevation Capital) which backed the startup in January 2025.

Speaking to Moneycontrol, Arora said the overlap was never part of the firm's original investment thesis.

"When we invested in Snabbit, Urban Company was not in this help-at-home, on-demand home services market," Arora said. "Full credit to Abhiraj (Bhal) for seeing the opportunity and launching it with full intensity. Since then, once we are in both companies and they are competing, we don't have much of an option there."

Elevation holds around 8 percent in Urban Company and around 19 percent in Snabbit, as per private markets data platform Tracxn.

Arora's comments come as the rivalry between Snabbit, Urban Company's Insta Help and Pronto has escalated sharply over the past few months, with companies deploying aggressive customer acquisition campaigns, including limited-period Re 1 offers, while collectively burning close to Rs 150 crore in June to gain market share, Moneycontrol had exclusively reported.

Snabbit recently edged ahead of Urban Company on monthly order volumes, completing 1.51 million orders in June versus around 1.5 million for Urban Company's Insta Help business while Pronto crossed 950,000 orders during the month, according to figures reported by Moneycontrol.

To manage the conflict, Arora said Elevation has instituted strict internal separation between the two investments.

"What helps is Urban Company is a listed company and we don't have a board seat there, so we are not privy to any sensitive information. Even internally, the teams working with both companies are completely different. That helps, but obviously it's not the ideal position to be in when two companies are competing so intensively."

Despite the fierce competition and mounting cash burn, Elevation remains bullish on the long-term opportunity.

Arora argued that early operating metrics mirror those seen during the formative years of food delivery in India.

"If I look at the first 18 months of data, whether it's the pace of growth, customer retention or frequency of use, those numbers look very similar to food delivery in the early days. In fact, better than food delivery in the early days," he told Moneycontrol.

Elevation was a key backer of Swiggy, too.

He added that customer behaviour also resembles food delivery's early adopters, strengthening the firm's conviction that instant home services could evolve into a similarly large category.

"In our view, this market is at least as deep as food delivery, if not deeper," Arora said, adding that a target of 20-25 million monthly transacting users (MTUs) over the next three to five years would represent a meaningful milestone for the sector.

Unlike food delivery, however, Arora believes the category has one structural advantage: capital discipline.

"Food delivery in India got built when late-stage capital was abundantly available. This category can be equally large but built in a much more capital-efficient manner," he said. While acknowledging that spending will remain elevated in the early years, Arora said the long-term economics could prove stronger as the market matures.

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