Do you have tonnes of dirty laundry but are too lazy to do them? What if someone could just pick it up from your house and bring them back all soft and clean?

Washeasy.pk is a Karachi-based on-demand laundry startup that offers washing, ironing and dry cleaning services at the comfort of your house. All you have to do is access their website, select ‘place an order’, enter your contact details like name, number and address, pick a service, add any special remarks if you want to, and submit your order. Within a few hours, a rider will pick up clothes from your doorstep and deliver clean clothes within 72 hours.

Alternatively, you can make the request through phone, WhatsApp, Facebook or even Twitter. The delivery guy comes on a bike with a big box in which your clothes are hanged and an automated invoice is sent via email/WhatsApp.

Washing starts at Rs90 and dry cleaning at Rs150 a piece for basic clothing and prices go up for more delicate items like embroidered dresses and suits. The rates double for urgent service where they promise same day pick and drop if you place the order before 10am. They have some bulk packages as well and are now working on monthly subscription plans too.

Currently, the startup works as a retailer but doesn’t have its own factory/machinery. Instead, they have three vendors who do the washing/dry cleaning on their behalf while Washeasy manages logistics, orders and quality. However, they don’t plan to keep it that way for long. “We are working on a marketplace model that will list dry cleaners from across the city and the customers can then choose whichever one they want to book. Similar to Foodpanda, with order management and logistics to remain in-house,” she says, adding that “once that kicks off, we will try to bring in some dhobis as well to make our services more accessible across the entire price spectrum,” says the Chief Executive Afshan Samad.

This is a very hierarchical market though, with a different service available at every price point; starting from dhobi for regular laundry, neighbourhood dry cleaners for relatively more expensive cleaning and brands like Classic and Snow White for high-end service. Given that Washeasy’s rates are well above those of dhobis and a bit more than local dry cleaners but less than the big brands, they stand somewhere in the middle.

But in a country where price is often the biggest determinant of the market share, how does Washeasy plan to stay ahead in the game? “Our competition isn’t with the dhobi or small dry cleaner as the service we are offering is much more premium. With the detergents and machinery used as well as the quality promised, our price is obviously higher to make it sustainable. But compared to the well-known chains, our home service, that too at lower rates, makes us much more competitive,” says the CEO.

The startup was founded in January 2018 by Abdullah Syed and Afshan Samad, a duo running their tech company. “We always found ourselves short of time to do our own laundry and realised this is a problem for many working people,” says Afshan. So far, it’s bootstrapped and she feels it’s too early to seek money elsewhere.

As for revenues, they have rates per service fixed with vendors and retail price for customers, and earn through the difference between the two. Currently, the project is still running losses due to overheads, which are expected to go down as tech is scaled further.

However, the proposition isn’t the first of its kind and the idea has been tried before. Cleanry, for example, was a well-funded startup that came about sometime in late 2014 but eventually shut down operations around 2-3 years later. Why? One former employee, speaking to Dawn, attributed it to the hired top management which wasn’t too committed to the owners’ vision.

But the past is in another country so let’s talk present; the current market isn’t unmanned either. A new venture, Washup, is attempting to grab a share of the local market with its offering of laundry by kilograms. While Fabricare — with its venture capital money from Sarmyacar — is working in the same space but with a different model.

How does Washeasy plan to stay ahead of the competition? “Washup’s presence creates more awareness about the on-demand laundry services and that benefits us too. As for Fabricare, they are limited to only Islamabad for now so there is no direct competition yet. Plus, we are the only ones at the moment operating across all of Karachi. Others are limited to just certain localities and that obviously gives us an edge,” says Afshan.

The market obviously has a lot of dirt so let’s just see how much can these guys wash off.

The writer is member of staff:
m.mutaherkhan@gmail.com
Twitter: @MutaherKhan

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2019