MPA ASSIGNMENT

ORGANISATION’S BRIEF
History of urban company
The company’s foundation dates back to 2014 and was founded by Varun
Khaitan, Raghav Chandra and Abhiraj Bhal. Prior to announcing this
revolutionary idea, the partnership of the three worked on an idea called Cinema
Box. This will allow the user to stream movies and videos over her Wi-Fi while
traveling. Urban Company’s initial budget of Rs 100,000 was used to develop
an effective mobile app that provided an active platform for professionals and
service seekers to connect Currently, Urban Company operates in 8 different
cities in India Within six years of its inception, the company receives
approximately 5,500 service requests per day and the team has achieved his
100% customer satisfaction rate.

Headquarter
Urban company has headquarters based in Gurugram, India.
Organization structure of Urban Company
CEO
ABHIRAJ BAL

CFO COO
VARUN
ABHAY MATHUR KHAITAN

DIRECTOR DIRECTOR
ABHINAY RAVI
CHATURVEDI ADUSUMALLI

FINANCE

HR

Key Activity
We use technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to help
users find the best service and simplify their work. With the help of artificial
intelligence, the company can offer personalized solutions to its customers.
How does Urban Company Make Money?
There are three ways of how the company generates its money:
1. Commissions:
The users hire the service providers from the app. When they utilize the
services, they pay for them. From this payment, the company gets a
commission.
2. Reverse auction:
In this, a particular service provider asks the company for its promotion
on the platform. In exchange for the promotion urban company charges
money from the service provider.
3. Ads or Commercials:
Various big businesses, manufacturers run their ads on the company’s
platform. The company thus gets a fee in exchange for this.
How does Urban Company work?
Service receivers end:
  Using the app of Urban Company, the users can visit a list of specific
service providers and can choose one among those depending on their
requirements.
 A range of products is indexed in the app, from which users can choose
any specific service and then can filter the providers based on their
budget.
 Once a kit of service is purchased by the user, he/she can select a time
slot and date based on their availability.
 The app and also the website allows the users to know the work history of
the service providers via review and ratings, helping them to choose the
best solution.
 Users can pay the service charges via the app or can make the COD
payment.
Service providers end:
 Once a request for a service is generated on the app, it is notified to the
service provider. They have the authority to accept it or to decline it.
 The business model of Urban clap (now urban company) is designed to
assist service providers to evaluate their job constraint and can accept or
reject based on those obligations
 Once the service request is accepted by the service provider, an alert is
sent to the customer notifying them about the service provider.
BUSINESS MODEL OF URBAN COMPANY:
Services with fixed prices:
Plumbing, electrician, and house cleaning services have a fixed cost model in
which the user selects a professional to acquire a solution for his need and pays
the remuneration to the firm via the app. The corporation deducts certain
predetermined service costs from the collected cash and provides the remainder
to the professional as their remuneration.
Services without fixed prices:
In accordance with this service model, the business charges professionals to
offer their services on the app's sponsored page, which enables users to generate
leads. In this paradigm, the professional is in charge of outlining their offerings,
benefits, and fees in order to persuade the client to hire them. Users learn
comprehensive information about the service providers through this before
choosing the services.
In such a concept, the Urban company offers the users five options from which
they can select any in accordance with their needs.
KEY COMPONENTS OF URBAN COMPANY’S
BUSINESS MODEL:
Brand statement:
Allow anyone looking for services to quickly connect with the best and most
qualified service providers.
Resources:
Robust and responsive mobile application
Excellently user-friendly and interesting website
Key activities:
Leveraging technology like machine learning and artificial intelligence to assist
people in finding the finest services and make their work easier. The business
may provide clients with customized solutions by utilizing artificial intelligence.
The time slot that consumers choose is influenced by the cost of the services.
Use of a marketing approach that is efficient and covers the entire city.
Revenue sources:
Lead generation
Reverse auction
Commission from the payments of service providers
Advertisement platform
Effective Customer Relationship Management
Use of social media
Round-the-clock customer support
Review and rating to help other customers know the services better

PROBLEM
Poor remuneration
Urban Company decided not to provide insurance and charged the employees
up to 30% in commission. and required them to purchase the company’s pricey
beauty products, which were more expensive than those available on the
market. The management also charged 2,000 if the employees performed fewer
than 30 jobs each month. Remuneration is a major aspect of any job, it’s the key
incentive for an employee to work. The employee evaluates his needs and
decides whether or not they should take up the job based on the remuneration
they get. If their monetary needs arent met the employees would tend to leave
the current job and look for other jobs to earn their living. Hence Urban
Company managerial decisions on their incentives to employees have made the
workers demotivated in working for the company due to the lack of monetary
incentive.
Unethical work schedules
Urban company made the employees work rigorously, routinely assigned night
shifts to employees causing them to overwork. This overwork was not even
compensated accordingly. They even put a minimum amount of work required
in every month so as to ensure more sales but the if the employees failed to do
there was a hefty penalty imposed on them. After all the work the employees
hardly could earn any money as most of it was absorbed in commission and
buying of products of the company itself. In order for attaining every
employee's full potential and efficiency to work they need to be well rested. To
attain organizational objectives and goals overwork of employees would reduce
their work efficiency due to over exhaustion. This would eventually backfire
onto the company as it did on October 2021 when more than 100 women who
worked as spa hosts and beauticians for went on strike to protest the poor pay,
hefty commissions, and hazardous working conditions. Additionally, it has
decided to remove all transient restrictions on service providers. The business
reported that a number of service professionals had their access to the platform
temporarily blocked due to a variety of algorithmic factors.

URBAN COMPANY’S SOLUTION:

Urban Company has made the decision to lower the commission cap from the
former 35% to 25%.
Varun Khaitan, a co-founder of Urban Company, reaffirmed that they have
taken a number of lessons from other businesses and intend to grow their
business sustainably without reducing the profits of these partners. Urban
Company, an on-demand platform for home and beauty services, unveiled a 12-
point agenda designed to increase transparency for all stakeholders and improve
the pay of service providers registered on the platform.
1. Removal of temporary blocks on service partners.
2. Marginally increasing the price of high-demand services.
3. Reducing the commission cap to 25%. Average commissions will drop to
20-22%.
4. Reducing monetary penalties and maximum cap on monthly penalties per
partner to Rs. 1,500.
5. Delivering new products to service professionals only after their consent,
at a 10% reduced cost.
6. Customers are liable to a last-minute cancellation fee, which will be
transferred to the service professionals
7. An SOS helpline will be launched for female partners.
 8. The modifying partner rating system, which will reduce drastic
movement in average rating based on a few bad orders
9. Start sensitizing customers to treat partners better. Customers who are
rated low by the partner will not be assigned back to the said partner.
10.Company will bear the cost of the vaccination of partners.
11.Simpler life and accidental insurance claims process. Health insurance
will be offered as well.
12.Removing automatic credit deduction ensure more liquidity for partners.

MANAGEMENT THEORY
In the given case of Urban Company, where multiple employees went on a
strike. Assessing the problem, the majority of issues were related to the
employees and the difficult working conditions. The company is a people
driven company and main focus is on the human resource. So the key focus
point is the on the individuals and their needs. As per above observation in the
case of Urban Company the most appropriate approach will be Human
Relations Approach.
The demands of the person and the actions that arise for both individuals and
groups are the main topics of the human relations theory. In order to manage
people, an interpersonal strategy is required. It implies that both official and
informal components make up the organization.
The structure of an organization consists of its formal components. The
relationships between people are among the informal features of the
organization. The group is a particular kind of social system in this sense. To
foster individual job satisfaction and the subsequent motivation of the
individual, this system should be handled.
The following Management / Motivational Theories should be adopted for the
given problem: -

MASLOW’S HEIRARCHY OF NEEDS

Human behavior is goal-directed. Motivation cause goal-directed behavior. It is
through motivation that needs can be handled and tackled purposely. This can
be understood by understanding the hierarchy of needs by manager. The needs
of individual serves as a driving force in human behavior. Therefore, a manager
must understand the “hierarchy of needs”. Maslow has proposed “The Need
Hierarchy Model”.
The needs have been classified into the following in order:
1. Physiological needs- These are the basic needs of an individual
which includes food, clothing, shelter, air, water, etc. These needs
relate to the survival and maintenance of human life.
2. Safety needs- These needs are also important for human beings.
Everybody wants job security, protection against danger, safety of
property, etc.
3. Social needs- These needs emerge from society. Man is a social
animal. These needs become important. For example- love,
affection, belongingness, friendship, conversation, etc.
4. Esteem needs- These needs relate to desire for self-respect,
recognition and respect from others.
5. Self-actualization needs- These are the needs of the highest order
and these needs are found in those person whose previous four
needs are satisfied. This will include need for social service,
meditation.
So Urban Company is a human driven company, where employees are the most
important aspect, so the needs of the employees need to be tackled and
addressed. As per the given case, the company is barely able to fulfil the basic
needs of the employee’s like appropriate salaries to purchase the basic
necessities of life.
So in the given case by applying Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory we can
understand the needs of employees and address them in a systematic and step by
step manner.
The company as a solution first address the basic physiological needs by
reducing the commission cap and monetary penalties.
The company also took a step further by taking care of safety needs by
launching helpline for female partners, bearing vaccination costs for employees
and health insurance.

ELTON’S MAYO’S
The Elton Mayo Human Relations Theory demonstrated how important
relationships are to human productivity. For a human relations-focused
workplace culture to be properly carried out, employers and managers need to
possess a wide range of competencies.
In the given case, the major problem is the unfair treatment of the employees so
by improving and focusing on human relations the situation can be tackled.

CONCLUSION
Urban company is a service-oriented company whose primary purpose is to
provide customers with domestic services at their doorstep. It's a major human
capital-based company where the employees play the most crucial part in
providing the services. Keeping the employees content significantly affects their
efficiency and dedication to their work.
In this case, the company failed to provide its employees with suitable salaries
to sustain basic needs and to create a better work environment. Due to these
reasons, the tension between the employees and the company kept rising until,
eventually, protests broke out.
The company sought Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory and started
changing according to the employees' immediate needs. The management made
changes in their employees' remuneration policies and gave more commission.
For the welfare of their employees, the company made a helpline for female
employees and provided them with basic medical insurance. These changes
brought changes in the minds and hearts of the employees. As the company
tended to the needs of their employees, they were more satisfied with the new
and had more sense of belonging.

REFERENCES:
 Urban Company has announced a 12-point agenda to improve partner
earnings after over 100 workers protest
https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/urban-
company-has-announc

 India: Urban Company women workers protest over working

conditions & pay
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/india-urban-
company-women-