Technically speaking, Wassup began in 2012. Its Ambattur outlet handles about 5,000 pieces of hotel and airline linen a day: cleaning them, ironing them and returning them crisp and ready to use.
But their focus has always been on the neighbourhood customer, the working professional or the family household spending money for clothes to be washed at home, and again for them to be ironed outside. Only after years of trial and error — including the launch of an app and the attempted integration of dhobis onto a single plaform — are Durga Das and Balachandar R finally ready to launch Wassup, their startup chain of neighbourhood laundromats, this week.
“We have been studying not only Indian markets, but also global ones,” says Bala. “Of these, the Malaysian market seems the most similar to India. In fact, they’re already a few years into the future.”
You might be wondering why all this brouhaha about a mere clothes washing service. According to Bala, that’s the same thing people were wondering about salons some years ago.
“Less than 10 years ago, people were laughing at the idea of paying hundreds of rupees for a haircut that a local barber can give you for ₹20. But today, if you just take a stroll out this door, you’ll find five high-end salons on this road alone,” he says, beckoning out the door of Wassup’s first maiden laundromat at the Chamiers Road crossing.
Simply put, it’s a need that, if tapped into well, can result in good business. “Everyone, whether they wash their clothes themselves, employ a maid, or use a washing machine, sends them out to be ironed. That would cost them ₹8 or ₹9. If someone washes and irons it for them, they can charge anywhere between ₹15 and ₹20, depending on the locality.”
With that price benchmark, Bala and Durga plan to open a series of outlets around the city where people can drop their clothes off en route to work or during errands, see the machines being used to clean and iron them, and have them back within a day or two. Unlike laundromats in the US, where you walk in with your laundry and stack of coins, and use the facilities to clean your clothes yourself, Wassup’s staff will be doing it for you. “The reason people use such a service is to save time and effort. So if we invite someone to come use our facilities to wash their clothes, nobody will do it,” he says.
A key component in the plan is accessibility. “A laundromat should be like a kirana store,” explains Bala, “It should be at arm’s length: close enough for me to either walk to or to call someone over.”
The Nandanam branch will be inaugurated this week, but the duo has already received franchisee enquiries across the city and the State. Their target, says Bala, is 25 branches in Chennai within six months, and 200 across the five South Indian states in the next two years.
For details, call 9500089119.