What Urban Company is (if you know it from India or the Gulf)
Urban Company is Asia's largest online home-services platform. It works as a managed marketplace: you book a service through the app, the platform matches you with a trained professional from its network, and the pro arrives with standardised pricing set by the platform. Urban Company recruits and trains its professionals, provides uniforms, products and insurance, and takes a commission on each booking. After the job, you rate the professional.
It covers a wide range of home services — beauty and spa at home, cleaning, plumbing, electrical, carpentry, appliance repair, painting and more — and is known for a consistent, app-driven experience where the platform, rather than you, handles matching and pricing.
Is Urban Company in Mauritius?
No. Urban Company operates in India, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Australia and parts of the United States — but not Mauritius. You cannot open the app here and have it dispatch a vetted cleaner in Quatre Bornes or an electrician in Flic en Flac.
Mauritius has many skilled home-service providers, but they have traditionally been found through word of mouth, scattered Facebook pages and unverified listings — without a single trustworthy place to compare them and read honest reviews. Prouva is built to fill that gap, adapted to how the market actually works on the island.
Prouva: the Mauritius equivalent (with a different model)
Prouva is a free directory of home-service providers across Mauritius, built around honest, verified reviews. The biggest difference from Urban Company is the model. Urban Company is a managed marketplace that assigns you a worker and sets the price. Prouva is a directory: you browse providers, read what real customers experienced, and contact the one you choose directly — agreeing the price with them, with no platform commission in between.
That means you keep control of who you hire and what you pay, while still getting a strong trust signal. Rather than a single rating per booking, Prouva computes a provider's score from a short factual survey about what actually happened, gives far more weight to reviews backed by an invoice or contract, and lets recent experience count for more. Prouva is run as a non-profit community project — it's free for customers and for providers, with no commission and no membership.
Urban Company vs Prouva at a glance
Both aim to take the risk out of hiring for your home. The difference is that one books the job for you, and the other helps you choose and contact a provider yourself.
How the two compare
| Urban Company | Prouva (Mauritius) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it operates | India, UAE, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Australia, parts of the US | Mauritius |
| What it is | A managed booking marketplace (it assigns a pro) | A free directory of providers with reviews (you choose and contact directly) |
| Cost to you | Platform-set prices; the platform takes a commission | Free to use — you agree the price directly with the provider |
| Cost to the provider | Commission per booking, plus onboarding | Free — no commission, no membership, no pay-per-lead |
| Who runs it | A commercial company | A non-profit community project |
| Choosing your provider | The platform matches and assigns one | You browse, compare and pick |
| How reviews work | A rating per booking | Computed from a factual survey, weighted toward invoice-verified and recent reviews |
Finding a home-service provider in Mauritius today
- Search Prouva for the service and area you need, and shortlist two or three providers with solid, recent reviews.
- Favour providers with Verified reviews (backed by an invoice or contract) and, where it matters, a Verified business badge.
- Message your shortlist directly to confirm availability and agree a written price before the work starts.
- After the job, leave an honest review — it keeps the directory useful for the next person.
Prouva is free, so there's no reason not to check it before you hire. And every honest review added brings Mauritius closer to the kind of trusted home-services experience many of us are used to from elsewhere.