Are you tired of carrying loads of clothes for dry cleaning and other laundry services? Still having problems with quality of washing from your local laundry shop? The much awaited revolution in the commercial laundry segment has commenced in the Indian market, with two individuals from Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi - Abhishek (34) and Nishant (32) together started with the new venture with ‘Dhobilite’.
Nishant Tripathi co-founder says “With Dhobilite, we want to make laundry a hassle-free chore for consumers along with bringing a structured approach to the present market, a market with a multiplier growth trend opportunity.”
While the unorganized sector i.e. your local dhobi, still rules the roost, organized players are slowly making in roads into the industry. According to a recent survey, India’s dry-cleaning and laundry industry is approximately worth Rs3,000 - Rs3,500 crores. According to experts, it is estimated that by the end of 2020, more than three million households would be requiring laundry services on a weekly or even daily basis in the country.
In an era of more young entrepreneurs, where start -ups have been betting heavily on funding, Dhobilite is so far ‘self-funded’ and operating from its Noida office. The company started with an initial capital outlay of Rs25 lakh but is now looking for funding partners. “We are in talks with various investors and different partners for expanding our business to Gurgaon, Bangalore and Hyderabad,” Abhishek Kumar says.
Moreover, with the number of middle-class families preferring at-your-doorstep laundry services steadily on the rise, this business has immense potential. So much so, even global companies have started tapping into it.
“We are focused on making our services affordable to every middle household in India. With busy schedules it is getting frustrating for people to do these jobs at home, hence this is a daily need and not a need of some specific segment and with no marketing cost which results into lower rates charged for services rendered when compared to competitors in the territory,” says Nishant.
Dhobilite provides three interfaces, which includes Android App, Web and Customer-care number, where customer can get registered and place order. Moment order gets placed, the system sends alert to customer and company executives and the automated system align these order to one of the runner which reaches customer premises at the promised time.
As soon as clothes are received at the processing centre, they are well checked for any stains/ cuts/ defects which are informed to customer, in parallel the clothes are tagged with the bar coded tags, ensuring that no clothes are misplaced in entire process. After this invoice is generated and automated email and SMS with entire details are sent to customers. Depending on color and type, clothes are bundled in separate lots and sent to washing unit where different process and chemicals are used for different lots.
After drying clothes are sorted back using the bar codes and are matched against the system entry. “We ensure that all clothes are well processed and have no stains,” Abhishek added. Automated updates are sent to customer, about status of delivery. Deliveries are aligned for efficient utilization of the runners and to ensure that customer gets the delivery in the committed time. Customer can either pay by cash or make online transfer or can also pay using payment gateway on mobile app.
“The other option for customer is to recharge their wallet with which they get our services at discounted rates. We have made customer feedback and ticketing system very easy to ensure that all complaints and feedbacks gets collected by our system and 7 days warranty period is given to customers for our services,” Abhishek added.