Urban Company Eyes Room AC Market Under ‘Native’ Brand to Deepen Hardware-Service Integration

Urban Company is in early-stage discussions with component suppliers to locally assemble and sell room air conditioners under its in-house consumer brand Native, ET reported. The potential push into ACs would be the newest device category for the Gurgaon-based home-services platform, which already markets water purifiers and smart locks under the same label.

As per the report, the proposal aims to knit hardware sales more tightly to Urban Company’s service ecosystem. The platform already generates sizeable revenue from appliance repairs and AC servicing, making room air conditioners a natural adjacent product for its technicians, diagnostics tools and app-based workflows.

Urban Company has also rolled out a “device co-pilot” to help technicians run standard diagnostics on AC faults, a capability that could dovetail with selling its own units.

Market Tailwinds

India’s room AC market, which is served by a dozen or more major brands, sells roughly 13–15 million units annually. The market has received a stimulus from the recent GST cut that trimmed the tax on air conditioners from 28% to 18%, prompting manufacturers to trim prices and report stronger festive-season demand.

Urban Company’s management has cited the GST revision and rising replacement demand as market drivers that make an AC play compelling.

Chief executive Abhiraj Singh Bhal has previously framed Native as a strategic “devices” layer for the broader Urban Company proposition, hardware that integrates with the app to deliver seamless after-sales and recurring service revenue.

“Our goal is to build the backbone that makes high-quality, convenient services possible. ‘Native’ will add a devices layer, and over the next decade, we’ll expand into one or two more categories that naturally fit with our platform,” he said in a recent interview.

Financials and IPO Context

Launched in 2023, the Native unit reported a rapid climb in revenue, touching about ₹116 crore in FY25, roughly four times the prior year, and is positioned as a growth lever for the company.

Urban Company, which listed on the public markets last month, recorded operating revenue of ₹1,144 crore for FY25, a 38% rise year-on-year, and swung to a reported net profit of ₹240 crore for the year, reversing earlier losses.

The company’s draft red herring prospectus filed with SEBI for a proposed ₹1,900 crore IPO outlined plans to deploy fresh-issue proceeds into technology and cloud infrastructure, office lease obligations and marketing; promoters were not diluting holdings in the offer. Urban Company has flagged that Native is expected to be a key growth engine as it scales its hybrid model of services plus device sales.

For Urban Company, bringing an AC to market would leverage its existing technician network, service revenues and app integrations, potentially creating a vertically integrated consumer proposition where sales feed recurring maintenance income.

But the move also brings execution risks: the room AC segment is competitive, distribution-heavy and dominated by established appliance makers, while manufacturing at scale requires supply-chain control and after-sales logistics that differ from the company’s core marketplace business.