London-based on-demand wellness app Urban is one of the leading wellness app in Europe, which operates in four cities. The company works with the mission to make it easy to book appointments for wellness and treatments right in the comfort of their home. It empowers practitioners by providing them the tools, information, and community to build their business.
Raises €6.5M funding
Now, Urban has raised €6.5M on Seedrs, an equity crowdfunding platform, thereby tripling the initial target of €2M. This is the third-largest raise on Seedrs this year. Among the 2020 Seedrs investors is BNF Capital, a London investment firm with companies such as AirBnB, Gousto, and Revolut in its portfolio. While the campaign was originally set to campaign until mid-October, the increased investment made Urban close the crowdfunding earlier than expected.
“We’re energised and ready to start making good on the promises we’ve made to investors, which includes longstanding Urban customers and professionals alike. This crowdfund is likely to be our last for a very long time,” says Jack Tang, CEO of Urban.
Urban plans to use the investment to expand to more cities with the help of a new remote onboarding process, which does not require professions to visit a physical office. This COVID-19 secure model will let Urban scale at a much faster rate than ever. It also intends to achieve profitability by the end of 2021 by building on its services such as massage, beauty, osteopathy, physiotherapy, fitness and more.
Staying well during the pandemic
Founded in 2014 by Jack Tang and Giles Williams founded Urban with the intention of starting a massage-at-home service. However, they discovered an industry that was broken: practitioners typically took home only 20% of booking revenue and worked long hours to make ends meet. Meanwhile, customers had little other than a salon’s reputation to go off of before making a booking with a specific practitioner.
Therefore, the duo decided to build a platform that would benefit practitioners and customers alike. According to the company, on Urban, practitioners take home 72% of bookings. And customers are able to choose between trusted, pre-vetted practitioners, thanks to detailed profiles with personal bios, ratings and reviews.
Urban operates in London, Manchester, Paris, and Birmingham. It was founded with the intention of starting a massage-at-home service.
During the pandemic crisis, this wellness app witnessed growing enthusiasm for at-home services, a surge in the number of professionals willing to go mobile to reduce overheads, and less competition in the wellness market. According to the company, as of last year, Urban delivered over 451k treatments and received 91% five-star reviews.
Main image picture credits: Urban