Inside The Economics That May Make Or Break Instant Home Services

On August 2, Urban Company cofounder and CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal announced that the company’s instant housekeeping service, InstaHelp, had crossed 1 Lakh daily delivered orders. Hot on the heels of his announcement, rival Snabbit said it had reached a similar milestone, completing 1.15 Lakh jobs in a day.

Yet, the more interesting part of both announcements wasn’t the milestone. Instead of celebrating growth, both companies devoted a significant part of their updates to burn per order, neighborhood density, contribution margins and customer willingness to pay. Sources told Inc42 that Pronto, too, has reduced its monthly cash burn to below $3 Mn from $8 Mn last year. Pronto is currently doing around 50,000-60,000 orders per day.

As instant home services scale from a niche convenience to a mass-market habit, the conversation is shifting from demand creation to unit economics. Companies are no longer in the race to prove that consumers want a cleaner or cook in 10 minutes, but something bigger: Can the category deliver profitability?  

Scale No Longer The Only Metric

Urban Company launched InstaHelp in Mumbai in March 2025 and has since expanded the service across several metro cities. It reached 50,000 daily bookings on February 22, 2026, and doubled that figure to over 1 Lakh daily orders just five months later. 

Snabbit’s rise has been equally noteworthy. The Bengaluru-based startup has grown from roughly 400 daily jobs to more than 1.15 Lakh in under two years. 

During Q1 FY27 alone, it completed 40 Lakh jobs while expanding to ten cities and over 150 micromarkets. Pronto had reported having completed 10.5 Lakh jobs last month. 

As per an investor, average monthly order frequency across the category has risen from roughly 1-1.5 bookings per month to 3.4 or 4, while power users are already booking services multiple times every week. 

The next challenge, however, is ensuring the durability of this business model. 

Urban Company’s latest quarterly results show that InstaHelp remains an expensive business. The vertical generated ₹53 Cr in net transaction value in Q1 FY27 against an adjusted EBITDA loss of ₹132 Cr. This was when its adjusted EBITDA loss per order improved to ₹346 during the quarter from ₹447 in Q4 FY26. 

According to Bhal, denser micromarkets enabled professionals to complete more jobs in the same neighbourhood, reducing travel time, improve utilisation and lower fulfilment costs. 

Snabbit has also built its entire operating strategy around the same principle. Instead of spreading aggressively across cities, the startup has doubled down its efforts on individual micromarkets. 

Snabbit’s founder Aayush Agarwal’s argument is also the same: ‘shorter travel distances allow professionals to complete more jobs every hour, improve customer wait times and reduce fulfilment costs’. 

As a result, Snabbit’s burn per job declined by more than ₹100 QoQ to below ₹250, while consolidated net order value after discounts crossed ₹130. 

However, investors warn that the decline in burn should not be mistaken for structural efficiency. This is because much of the current improvement comes from operating leverage rather than fundamental cost reductions. 

“The engineering team, the product team and corporate overheads remain largely the same whether a platform processes 1,000 orders or 1 Lakh orders every day. As volume rises, those fixed costs simply get spread across more bookings,” the investor explained 

Simply put: as utilisation improves, the cost per order falls, giving companies room to lower prices without proportionately increasing losses.

However, this only works when a company deepens its presence in existing geographies rather than expanding into new ones.

Snabbit claims that going deeper into its existing micromarkets has helped the startup reduce its customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 65% from its peak in November 2025. Notably, it has also turned its back on discounting, arguing that long-term demand should come from convenience and service quality instead of promotions.

Inside The Economics Of Profitability

Investors we spoke with highlighted that profitability in instant home services won’t come from charging customers more, but from operational efficiency and scale. They believe three structural levers will determine whether instant home services can become a profitable category. 

Industry insiders pointed at three structural levers that will determine whether the category eventually becomes profitable: 

• Lower CAC as repeat usage improves. 
• Higher utilisation, or allowing professionals to complete more jobs every day
• Labour costs, which are expected to moderate with more workers entering the category

Then, labour remains one of the biggest problems for every platform. “Ask any founder what’s stopping them from doing three times more orders and they will all tell you the same thing: ‘supply’,” said an investor, adding that supply bottlenecks keep payouts elevated. 

As more workers enter the category, platforms are expected to gain greater flexibility to optimise payouts, much like ride-hailing and food delivery companies did as their markets matured.     

According to an industry expert, reducing travel time is as important as increasing bookings. The more jobs a professional completes within the same apartment complex or neighbourhood, the lower the fulfilment cost for the platform and the higher the earnings for the worker. 

Culling Cash Burn Won’t Cut It

Lowering fulfilment costs is only one piece of the puzzle. The bigger challenge for instant home services companies is increasing how much every customer spends over time. 

For Urban Company, this could mean bringing more customers into InstaHelp before cross-selling them higher-ticket services such as beauty, appliance repairs and home maintenance. Newer players like Snabbit and Pronto will also have to create similar opportunities. 

“Today it’s about cleaning and cooking. Tomorrow it could be pet care, elderly assistance or even subscription based services. Companies have to increase customer spending without proportionately increasing customer acquisition costs,” the investor said. 

Much like how quick commerce expanded beyond groceries into electronics, medicines and beauty products, instant home services platforms are expected to double down on their offerings.

Ultimately, cracking unit economics will require companies to increase customer spending, improve utilisation and bring down customer acquisition costs.

Edited By Shishir Parasher
Creatives: Varshita Srivastava

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