WeClean is India’s Digital First Cloud Laundry Startup founded by Rishi Rathod in Mumbai in June 2021. WeClean operates out of a 6000 sq. ft. space in Parel, Mumbai, which has a capacity of 11,000 items per day. WeClean has recently launched an advanced mobile application that enables customers to book and track orders, engage with its customer support team, and make seamless online payments.
WeClean aims to transform the traditionally unorganized ($2.5 billion) retail laundry industry into a technology-driven, professionally managed sector, using its ‘CAQTS’ approach of Convenience, Affordability, Quality, Transparency and Speedy service. Rishi is determined to create an unmatched digital first brand that could revolutionize the laundry industry by implementing end-to-end digital management of processes.
What is WeClean?
WeClean is India’s Digital First Cloud Laundry Startup founded by Rishi Rathod in Mumbai in June 2021. WeClean operates out of a 6000 sq. ft. space in Parel, Mumbai, with a highly professional team managing various functions such as Customer Support, HR, Marketing, Logistics, and Laundry Operations.
WeClean currently offers a wide range of laundry, dry clean, shoes, bags, linens, and upholstery cleaning services in Mumbai, and has the capacity to process and store up to 11,000 items each day. The company manages end-to-end services using state-of-the-art machinery, imported solvents and trained professionals without any outsourcing and with complete in-house quality control. WeClean has also launched an advanced mobile application that enables customers to book and track orders, engage with its customer support team, and make seamless online payments.
How is WeClean disrupting the laundry sector?
As of now, the Indian market is dominated by three models of laundry services.
- Professional laundries: Caters from physical stores in multiple locations, with a workforce of 20+ people overall.
- Single unit/micro laundries (dhobi setups): Typically have a single store catering to 1-2 pin codes, partly outsources work to others, with a workforce of less than 20 people.
- Aggregator platforms: Mostly startups, aiming to run asset-light operations, providing only pick and drop facility with customer support, outsource laundry process to vendors, and may have more or less than 20 delivery executives.
The above-mentioned traditional laundry service models, lack end-to-end digitally-driven monitoring, convenience of booking & tracking, transparency in process, quality management and customer-centricity. This is where WeClean is emerging as a gamechanger powered by cutting-edge technologies and an in-depth understanding of diverse customer needs, that go beyond washing, dry cleaning and ironing.
What is the brand’s vision and mission?
WeClean aims to transform the traditionally unorganized ($2.5 billion) retail laundry industry into a technology-driven, professionally managed sector, using its ‘CAQTS’ approach of Convenience, Affordability, Quality, Transparency and Speedy service. Our Mission is to be India’s Most Trusted & Reliable Laundry Partner, that offers Great Quality service with Complete Transparency.
What made you venture into the laundry space, especially the idea of digitizing the sector?
After having evaluated over a dozen potential business concepts, Rishi zeroed-in on the laundry industry as it had all the potential as well as the challenges that he felt could be addressed through a digital first approach.
Prior to 2020 Rishi had embarked on an extensive market research of the cleaning industry, the processes, customer experience, pain-points, and the tech as well as cleaning solutions deployed by players in India. During his research, Rishi also went to China where he did a brief stint with a local company. Upon returning, he made his first foray into the dry-cleaning industry.
He had felt the need first hand as a young professional residing in a metro city like Mumbai. Life in major cities is hectic and many residents in cities like Mumbai rely upon services such as laundries to smoothly manage their daily routines. In fact, Mumbai is the perfect example of Indian laundry sector’s operational processes and potential.
Insights into the industry and how WeClean is disrupting the sector?
WeClean recently raised a round of INR 5.3 crore, from investors who believe in the vision of its First of a kind Digital Laundry founded on the premise of fulfilling the laundry needs for over a 100 million Indians across the country in an organised and seamless manner.
Mumbai has the largest open-air dhobi ghat (Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat) in the world. Epitomizing the scale of the opportunity available, the more than 130-year-old Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat sees over 100,000 pieces of clothing from all over Mumbai getting washed, bleached, ironed, and dyed each day. While it all makes for mind boggling numbers, making its way to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is not exactly the most efficient, customer and fabric friendly laundry option available. WeClean aims to revolutionize the current traditional and unorganized Indian Laundry Segment, by leveraging cutting-edge technologies with state-of-the-art machines and an end-to-end mobile application.
How is WeClean digitising the laundry space by making it a d2c offering and what are the challenges?
Customers not only need utmost safety, hygiene, and cleanliness of clothes, but also want to adhere to timelines, and the ability to track transactions. Manual tracking, documenting and record-keeping of orders and deliveries is not only error-prone, but also not in sync with new age technology enabled businesses. Errors can happen all through the value chain of the garment.
Like in the case of food delivery, quick commerce and ride hailing, we believe that the D2C customer behaviour for laundry services will also go through a gradual change, towards more convenient and branded services.
WeClean has recently launched an advanced mobile application that enables customers to book and track orders, engage with its customer support team, and make seamless online payments. Besides this, the end-to-end technology solution ensures a seamless management of the order tracking, between the customer, the Weclean customer support team and the Weclean logistics team. The technology is in sync with the customer’s expectations from a D2C service offering and we are confident of WeClean becoming the premier Digital First brand in the Laundry Industry
What are your future plans for the company and where do you stand today?
Our goal is to simplify the lives of our customers, going beyond mere traditional laundry services and by early 2025 we aim to onboard over 1 million customers across urban India. We wish to expand to metro cities in North, South & Central India. But most of all, we wish to be India’s Most Trusted & Reliable Laundry Partner, that offers Great Quality service with Complete Transparency.
