This is to introduce our company, Village Laundry Services, operating under the brand name “Chamak’. VLS offers neighborhood, kiosk-format, Laundromat services to consumers with plans to open 1000 locations across India in the next 3 years.

We offer to wash, dry and iron clothes at only Rs. 50/ kg. We have very small footprint kiosk format that we place at the high footfall locations, making it very convenient for customers. We are targeting the ‘missing middle’ between the poor quality, cheap service by the traditional washing person, dhobi and the high end, very expensive dry cleaners/ laundries that are not affordable on a regular basis for the customers.

This service is especially useful for people who desire better cleaning but either don’t have the facility or the financial affordability to do so - these are typically students, young adults or lower income families. The aim is to keep the pricing for the service very affordable so that the middle class can use this service frequently.

It is headed by Akshay Mehra who has more than 10 years experience in FMCG and retail industries, and moved back to India after being in Singapore for 7 years. He worked with Procter and Gamble in the region for marketing of laundry brands across the region. He is a M.B.A from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. Akshay, moved back to India seeing the potential of disruptive innovation that can make the lives better; there are so consumer ‘pain points’ or inefficiencies we face in our daily lives, that can be reduced by disruptive innovation, case in point being that for a customer there is no middle ground between cheap, and poor quality wash by a dhobi or really expensive cleaning at the drycleaner or laundries – and it is this ‘middle ground’ opportunities that attracted him to come back to India.

The company has now appointed Sparkleminds to strategise its franchise growth, put a franchise development plan and help it achieve its target of 1000 kiosks in the next 3 years. Commenting upon the association, Mr Amit Nahar, CEO Sparkleminds, said that the “Indian Laundry Market is estimated to be around 3000 Crores growing at CAGR of 8%. There are only a few organized players in the country along with the unorganised segment dominated by the dhobi and the neighbourhood dry cleaner. There is a lot of potential for more organized players to come in and offer convenient services at affordable prices to the value conscious Indian consumer. That’s where VLS is placed perfectly and we are looking forward to offering this franchise to Entrepreneurs seeking a low cost service business that not only has a socially uplifting mission by providing employment, but also offers a great return on investment and time.”

Overview of the product(s) and/ or service(s)

The customer promise is to get better-quality washing experience, at a convenient location (because of small footprint of the booth), for just Rs. 50/ kg of clothes. Customers need to bring their clothes to the Chamak booth, the clothes are sorted, treatment applied on the areas with stains/ dirt and then washed, dried, ironed for the customer – all within 24 hours, compared to 5-7 days required with regular laundries.

Product Features

Chamak booths are innovatively design of be rollaway booth units (small 4ft by 4ft footprint, with self-contained water supply) allowing positioning in high demand locations, flexibility to move and most importantly reducing the rental costs per booth.

The booth incorporates a environmentally friendly, high-efficiency front-loading washing machine, which not only gives a better washing end-result but also is extremely efficient in water usage, the front loading machine uses about 40% less water than a top-loading machine, thus, reducing the resource intensiveness for the venture.

We have developed unique water handling system which allows us to use the rig without having any water connection close by, allowing flexibility in locating where the customer is and not where the utilities are available.

With all of these innovations, we have managed to keep the pricing affordable at Rs. 50/ kg. Despite using professional washing machines and a higher quality wash overall. This pricing is almost similar to that charged by dhobis and significantly cheaper than professional laundry stores (who can charge up to Rs. 90 per garment).

Chamak booths’ comparison with other options

	Other ‘Branded’ Laundry Services	Dhobi
Extremely Small footprint Chamak booths’ small footprintallows positioning in high demand locations.Thus giving it 2 advantages: Low Rental High Mobility –if demand is not there, it can be moved to a new location.	Need at least 300 sq. ft store front with high rentals No ability to move it customer demand not as per expectations.	No Retail outlet – Trust becomes as issue, as customer doesn’t know where to go if there is a delay/ misplacement of clothes.
24-48 hours delivery time due Completely Self-contained booth The washing, drying and ironing facilities are all provided within the booth, thus making it completely self-sufficient while still having a very small footprint.	4-5 days for delivery due to Centralized Laundry washing The laundry collected is sent to a centralized place involving logistics costs and delay.	Clothes collected and washed centrally.
High-quality washing and water. We use high-quality detergents such as Ariel for all the washing and potable water used is for washing. The customers can see the washing & ingredients being used, thus building trust on the quality of wash.	No guarantees As the centralized cleaning facility is used, there is no guarantee on the kind of detergents & water used and cleaning conditions. Thus, exposing customers to potential hygiene risks.	Cheap detergents and non-potable water used. Further, the dhobis beat the clothes which damage them further.
No water connection required We have developed unique water handling system which allows us to use the booth without having any water connection close by, allowing flexibility in locating where the customer is and not where the utilities are available.	No such technology	Not required as use river water or any available type of water.
Drying facility in-built the booth which gives 100% drying.	No such facility.	Sun-drying in unhygienic places

‘Doing Good’ – enabling sustainable livelihoods:

We believe in the ensuring that all our employees share in the growth of our company – we ensure that our employees see the clear benefits of working with Village Laundry Services. These benefits include:

(a) Skill development – Most of the front-end staff that we recruit are under-skilled/ un-skilled, having minimal/ no formal education or training. On joining, we give 7-days training to each of them which includes both operational training on process for good quality washing and personal grooming, communication, customer marketing. So at the end of the training, the person has the skills to work in a more professional manner.

(b) Financial security – There is a direct correlation between business performance and employee’s salary, our front-end staff salaries have no ceiling - higher the business, more is their monthly salary

(c) Personal – each of our front-end staff is provided with Personal accident insurance cover free of cost, also they get monthly bus pass so that they can travel in relative comfort to & from their place of work

Building Employment

With the expected 100 locations within the coming year, we expect to provide training and employment 250+ people from the low-income classes equipping them with skills and incomes to improve their lives..

Promoting from within – ‘from operator to manager’

Along with the benefits we also actively look to promote from within our organization. The aim is to reward our best performers with higher responsibility and salaries. Further, this also gives the front-end staff the confidence that unlike in other organizations, at Village laundry Services, they have an opportunity to become ‘managers’ and that there’s no glass ceiling in the organization.

Case in point being Shankar, he joined us in February and comes from a small village near Mysore (about 100 KM from Bangalore), where his father is a farmer. He had chosen to come to Bangalore rather than work on the family farm, and has this desire to prove to his family that he can do better in the city compared to working the fields.

When he came to Bangalore, he was a worker in the logistics department in a retail chain and was responsible for receiving and dispatching goods from the distribution centers. In India the distribution centers aren’t mechanized, so his job would entail manually picking up bags of fruits & vegetables whole day; and getting paid only Rs. 3500 per month – which was lower than what he could have made, had he worked in the fields.

Then he joined VLS, to begin with as an operator at our rigs. Right from the start, he was one of the hardest working operators with a knack for building relationships with the customers; very quickly the location became the highest revenue generating location. He was instrumental in getting it to this level - for example, he had such good rapport some households would only give their clothes if Shankar came to their doorstep, because they trusted him to not lose or damage their clothes.

As VLS expanded, it became important for us to have managers who can teach other new operators on customer handling, and other operational best practices. Shankar was the obvious choice for this job; we promoted him to become a ‘Area Manager’ to oversee 5 locations in Bangalore, and doubled his salary to Rs. 9000 per month (~US$180/ month). So from an operator, he has now become a manager, who handles and teaches other people on how to run the business, and is now the example for other operators on the rewards of working with VLS.

Becoming a manager is a significant change in his social standing, so much so that the day after he received his new title and higher salary, he immediately went to his father in the village, to announce the news and that he can finally demonstrate that he can do better on his own!

Key People Engaged

Akshay Mehra CEO: He has more than 10 years experience in FMCG and retail industries, and moved back to India after being in Singapore for 7 years. He worked with Procter and Gamble in the region for marketing of laundry brands across the region. He is a M.B.A from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

He helped to build the laundry business (Ariel and Tide detergents) across India and ASEAN countries esp. focusing on low-income countries like India and Vietnam. After that he worked in the Organized retail sector in India, thus having experience in business building in the retailing sector. Therefore, he brings a combination of laundry and retail experience which will be critical to build the laundry retail booths business.

Akshay, moved back to India seeing the potential of disruptive innovation that can make the lives better; there are so consumer ‘pain points’ or inefficiencies we face in our daily lives, that can be reduced by disruptive innovation, case in point being that for a customer there is no middle ground between cheap, and poor quality wash by a dhobi or really expensive cleaning at the drycleaner or laundries – and it is this ‘middle ground’ opportunities that attracted him to come back to India.

Hari Nair, director, he is highly experienced business development executive with significant global product development and management experience. Prior to joining Innosight, Hari was with the Global Research and Development Group at Procter & Gamble for 14 years. He helped lead P&G's scaled up efforts serving low income markets across Asia. Hari has significant experience and skills in product design, development, and shaping ideas through the initiative pipeline. Hari was recognized as an expert in consumer modeling, fast cycle consumer testing, pilot plant/scale up, as well as utilizing connect & develop (developing external connections) for speeding up innovations to market

Company Structure & Background

VLS is a 100% owned subsidiary of Innosight Ventures Private Limited with offices in Mumbai, Singapore and Baltimore. It began in 1997, with the publishing of The Innovator's Dilemma, by Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen who founded Innosight in 2001. Since 2001, Innosight has grown to become the world leader in the field of Innovation and a source for industry leaders in need of transformational change. Innosight Ventures has launched several new strategic partnerships to create a platform for new growth and Innovation in Asia and the US. Innosight Ventures now works with a range of portfolio companies to shape IP, interesting technologies and new business ideas into disruptive, fast growing businesses.