Why we built UrbanSolutions, and how it works.*
Ask anyone in Lagos who has renovated a flat, drilled a borehole, or wired an office, and you will hear some version of the same story.
You collected three numbers from three people. The quotes were 400,000, 650,000 and 1.1 million, and nobody could explain the gap. You picked one. He asked for money upfront to "buy materials." The work started well. Then he disappeared for six days. When he came back, the scope had somehow changed and there were extras nobody mentioned at the start. By the end you had paid more than you agreed, waited longer than you planned, and had no one to complain to.
Now flip it around, because the other side has a story too.
A good electrician finishes a job properly and then spends five weeks chasing the client for the balance. A carpenter turns down other work to hold a slot, and the client goes quiet. A cleaning crew gets accused of breaking something they never touched and eats the cost because there is no way to prove otherwise.
The Nigerian artisan market does not have a skills problem. There are excellent tradespeople in this city. What it has is a trust infrastructure problem. There is no reliable way to know who you are dealing with, no neutral party holding the money, and no record that follows anyone from one job to the next. So good artisans and bad artisans look identical from the outside, and everybody prices in the risk.
That is the problem UrbanSolutions was built to solve.
What UrbanSolutions actually is
We are an online marketplace for home and office services in Nigeria. We connect people who need work done with independent artisans, vendors and agents whose identity we verify before they can take a single job.
We cover the full range of what a home or an office actually needs. The building trades — construction, electrical, plumbing, carpentry, welding and metalworks, painting and finishing, glass and aluminium, borehole and water treatment, solar and inverter, HVAC, security installation. The services that keep a place running — cleaning, fumigation, maintenance, domestic staff, cooking and catering. Personal services like hairdressing and styling. And professional work — architecture and design, civil engineering, real estate and property.
Alongside the services, verified vendors list products: building materials, furniture, fittings, fashion and accessories.
But the services are not the product. Any directory can list a plumber. The product is what sits around the transaction.
The three things that change the game
- We verify identity before anyone touches your property
Every artisan on the platform passes NIN/BVN verification with guarantor checks before they can bid on work. This is the single most important thing we do, and it is the thing that is hardest to fake.
It means that when someone comes to your house, we know exactly who they are. Not a name and a phone number that stops working. A verified identity, tied to a profile, tied to a work history that follows them.
For the honest artisan, this is an asset, not an obstacle. Verification is how you stop competing with people who are pricing dishonestly, and start competing on the quality of your work.
2. Your money sits in escrow, not in the artisan's pocket
This is where most Nigerian job disputes are actually born — in the upfront payment.
On UrbanSolutions, you fund escrow rather than paying the artisan directly. We hold the money. The artisan knows the funds are there and real, so he can commit to your job and buy materials without worrying he will be chasing you in six weeks. You know the money does not move until you approve the completed work.
Nobody has to trust the other person's word. The structure does the work that trust used to have to do.
3. We manage the project, so you are not the site supervisor
Post what you need, with photos, a budget and an urgency level. Verified artisans bid on it. The bids come to you anonymized, so you are comparing price, timeline and rating rather than who has the smoothest sales talk.
You accept a bid and fund escrow. From there we oversee the milestones and quality checks until the job is finished. If something goes wrong, there is an independent complaint resolution process that weighs evidence and holds both sides accountable — and warranty periods on all services, backed by a guarantee fund.
The practical effect: you stop having to take four calls a day and drive to site to check whether anyone showed up.
What this looks like from the artisan's side
Everything above is written from the client's point of view. But the same structure solves a different problem for the person doing the work.
Ask a good artisan in Lagos how he gets his jobs and the answer is almost always the same: repeat customers and referrals. Which means the phone rings or it doesn't. Some months are full. Some months are empty. And there is very little he can do to change which kind of month he is having.
That is not a skills problem. It is a distribution problem, and it is the reason capable people in this trade earn far less than their work is worth.
On UrbanSolutions the work comes to you. Clients post jobs, you bid on the ones you want, and you are choosing rather than waiting.
Then there is the money. The client funds escrow before you start, so the payment is confirmed and sitting there before you lift a tool. You finish, the client approves, you are paid. No returning three times for a balance. No job that quietly never gets settled.
And every completed job builds a rating attached to your verified profile. That record follows you, which is something the informal market has never been able to give an honest artisan.
What this looks like for vendors
If you sell products — building materials, furniture, fittings, fashion, accessories — you can list them here too.
We are not asking you to leave wherever you currently sell. Listing with us costs nothing and runs alongside everything you already do. It is an additional channel, not a replacement.
What makes it worth adding is the context. Our buyers arrive with a project already underway. Someone rewiring a flat needs fittings. Someone furnishing an office needs furniture. Someone finishing a build needs materials. The intent to spend is already there — you simply need to be present when it is.
Payment works the same way it does for services. The buyer pays into escrow, and funds release to you on delivery.
Let's be straight about where we are
We launched this year. We are not going to tell you that thousands of Nigerians already use us, because that would be the exact kind of claim this whole platform exists to make unnecessary.
Here is what we can tell you honestly.
What is already real: the verification process, the escrow system, the bidding flow, the warranty and the dispute resolution process. Those are built, and they work the way this article describes.
What we are still building: volume. A marketplace gets better as more verified artisans join and more completed jobs build up a public track record. Early on, some categories will have more depth than others.
What that means for you right now: if you join early, you are joining a smaller platform with a lot more attention on your job. For artisans, it means less competition for the work that comes through. For clients, it means your project gets real oversight rather than being one of a thousand tickets.
We would rather tell you that than pretend to be bigger than we are. If the pitch is "we are the trustworthy option," then the pitch has to start with us being honest about ourselves.
Getting started
If you need work done, create a client account, post your job, and compare verified bids. You are not committed to anything until you accept a bid and fund escrow.
If you are an artisan or service provider, create a provider account and start identity verification. Once verified, you can bid on jobs and get paid through escrow — which means no more chasing balances.
If you are a vendor or agent, create a provider account and list your products or properties. It costs nothing, and it sits alongside whatever you are already doing.
Either way it costs nothing to sign up and look around.
- Clients: urbansolutions.com.ng/sign-up?role=client
- Artisans and vendors: urbansolutions.com.ng/sign-up?role=artisan
- Questions: admin@urbansolutions.com.ng · WhatsApp +234 810 115 9993
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UrbanSolutions is a managed service marketplace for home and office solutions in Nigeria. Vetted artisans. Escrow-protected payments. Every project managed to completion.