Urban Company Shares Slide 6% After Q2 Shock, Insta Help Investment Drives Widening Loss

Newly listed home-services platform Urban Company saw its shares fall more than 6% in early trade on November 3 after the company reported a sharp widening of its Q2 loss. This comes as the start-up poured capital into a new daily-help vertical, Insta Help.

Urban Company posted a consolidated net loss of ₹59.33 crore for Q2 FY26, a steep swing from the roughly ₹1.8 crore loss a year earlier and from a small profit in the previous quarter. The headline numbers spooked investors and pushed the stock down after an otherwise strong revenue quarter.

Revenue Growth but Profits Under Pressure

Revenue from operations rose 37% year-on-year to ₹380 crore, driven by demand across its core services and product lines. Total expenses, however, climbed sharply to ₹462 crore, leaving adjusted EBITDA at a negative ₹35 crore for the quarter.

Management said the bulk of the loss came from rapid investment in Insta Help, its new daily-housekeeping vertical. Urban Company reported that Insta Help alone accounted for an EBITDA loss of about ₹44 crore in Q2, even as the company described early adoption and repeat usage as “encouraging.”

Excluding Insta Help, the company said its core India consumer-services business generated an adjusted EBITDA profit of ₹10 crore (around 0.9% of net transaction value), signalling that the main platform remains operationally healthy even while the new line drags consolidated results.

Market Reaction & Share History

Urban Company debuted strongly on 17 September, listing at a premium and briefly hitting highs north of ₹200, but its stock has traded volatile since, with profit-taking and analyst caution trimming gains. The Q2 shock sent the share price to intraday low of 147.50 on November 3.

CEO Abhiraj Singh Bhal framed the losses as deliberate investments to scale Insta Help, noting the vertical reached significant order volumes and repeat customers in October. The company signalled that continued investment means losses may persist for the next few quarters while it prioritises customer acquisition and partner onboarding.

Brokerages and analysts have flagged uncertainty over how large-scale the investment in Insta Help must be before it breaks even; some see limited near-term clarity on the unit economics and amount of capital required to build a profitable business at scale. That ambiguity is weighing on investor sentiment.