How many of you love doing laundry at home?
Well, the problem of laundry and cleaning prevails in almost every household. People often spend up a lot of time in their laundry cleaning. On top of it, harsh detergents and faulty cleaning methods wash away the fabric’s quality. Good quality laundry is synonymous with the durability of clothes.
What should be the solution in this scenario? India’s dry cleaning and laundry sector is currently only 4% organized. There needs to be more consistency and quality checks available at local washermen or service members.
Nishant Tripathi, IIT-BHU alumni and the founder of DhobiLite identified these issues a while ago. Even after studying and working in software development, Nishant always resonated with the case of laundry cleaning. He started DhobiLite to find an easy and reliable cleaning solution. DhobiLite offers laundry and dry cleaning for the retail/consumer segment.
The company takes orders through the website, app, Whatsapp, and call center. With a vision to make cleaning convenient, DhobiLite picks up laundry from the customer’s location and delivers it back within 48-72 hours. Customers can receive their clothes quicker than other dry cleaners or local washermen. DhobiLite is currently present in 30+ cities across India and has been expanding over time.
We have interacted with Mr. Nishant Tripathi, CEO of DhobiLite, to learn more about his entrepreneurial success and vision.
How would you describe yourself as a person and an entrepreneur?
I am NishantTripathi, a 39-year-old family man who is living with my wife, son, and parents. Besides personal information, I graduated from IIT-BHU in 2007 and initially worked in IT.
However, I always aspired to start something of my own. I spent my initial years learning about laundry and dry cleaning and later began DhobiLite in 2011. That would summarise who I am as a person.
What has helped you to grow over the years?
In my opinion, the key to any successful business is building customers’ trust and satisfaction. It is difficult for any individual to keep their faith in a new business, especially regarding their clothes. People generally attach their emotions to their clothes, which becomes a part of them.
Thus, we focus on delivering high-quality services at affordable prices. One should not prioritize revenue or profits over people, be it customers, partners, or employees. The income eventually builds as these aspects are taken care of.
At DhobiLite, we also keep improving our technology (both in processing and servicing) to meet customers’ expectations and demands. As the line goes, “We learn from our own failures” we believe in experimenting with different work mechanisms on a micro level. This approach eventually leads us to a precise and efficient solution that can be implemented at the macro level.
How isDhobiLite different from any other laundry/drycleaning providers?
Uhmm, the primary factors differentiating any brand or business from others are price, quality, and customer service. We adopt high-quality cleaning methods at a lesser price than the market. Even though inflation is hitting each of us, we at DhobiLite try our best that the rising costs do not impact our customers.
We keep evolving our techniques to offer the best quality services at minimal charges. We will keep this pace to ease the burden of laundry from every shoulder. Moreover, we have held multiple quality parameters at all our processing centers. The quality check is completed at regular intervals throughout our different operating regions.
Are you currently focused on the expansion of DhobiLite?
To answer this question, expansion in terms of revenue or retail stores is not our priority. Expansion is quite a multidimensional aspect for me. It includes many components, such as reducing monthly and yearly consumer complaints.
We follow a 360 degrees approach to address each concern of our customers. Our time and experience in the business have allowed us to craft a comprehensive SOP module that franchise holders can automate, and revenue comes as a by-product for our franchise partners and us.
What is your target customer, and why?
Here is the thing: I do not believe in delivering an essential service like laundry or dry cleaning to an exclusive customer base. We aim to reach every customer or household across India.
This idea can be made possible only by offering multiple services per people’s demands. From basic laundry cleaning to premium shoe cleaning, we offer everything at DhobiLite. We also provide deep cleaning of sofas, carpets, rugs, etc., to the customers. Choosing different dry cleaners or laundry methods is indeed a task for anyone.
We aim to simplify laundry through DhobiLite. If I talk about my vision after a few years, I want people to remember DhobiLite as their first choice of cleaning services. We are trying hard daily to turn our goals into reality.
How does the DhobiLite franchise works?
We have three types of franchise models at DhobiLite.
The first one is the master franchise of the entire city, which means that the factory is established here. The surrounding retail stores are connected with the master franchise and operated under the same.
Second is the retail franchise which is pick-up and delivery points. Thus, our delivery partners pick up the clothes from the customer’s location and collect them here.
The third one is the standalone model, which is exactly what its name suggests. So, we perform live cleaning here, and the machines are installed inside the stores.
As I described earlier, a detailed SOP is followed throughout our franchise stores, keeping quality in check. We have recently launched retail stores in cities like Lucknow, Indore, Hyderabad, Gorakhpur, and Faridabad. We always aim to grow with our franchise partners and seek their valuable association.
What is your biggest fear, and what remedies do you implement?
It is quite a tricky question. Well, for me, I do not want my organization to grow like an elephant. Our company should be very flexible and able to adapt to changes. These changes could be any kind, including marketing conditions, ideas, demands, and more. As we have rightly observed, the current marketing conditions are pretty vulnerable. We need to operate a business model which is open to changes and can adapt to new demands.
Keeping the same objective, we have built our franchise model, which is quite adaptable for our partners. There have been times when our franchise partners might not understand the model’s beauty initially. As time passes, they start getting benefitted more and more from it. These partners are able to drive the business even amidst the harshest market conditions. All of it establishes a deep trust between the franchise partners and us.
What are your priorities in life, and how do you approach them?
For me, the topmost priority in my life is to take care of myself physically and mentally. The other priorities in my life are my family, and then comes my work. It might sound silly why I am prioritizing work at the end, but I have a strong reason for it.
Over time, I have realized that self-care can take you anywhere. We should never lose ourselves amidst this hustle culture. Keeping ourselves focused, physically healthy, and mentally well is extremely important.
The saying “Health is Wealth” never goes wrong, at least for me! One can only focus on work or family if they are physically and emotionally well. I placed family above work because one cannot work diligently if there are disturbances around the family. After all, we are all social beings committed to our loved ones. My life mantra is to keep my family and me happy.
Wrapping Up
Like any novel idea, DhobiLite initially started from zero. The perseverance and collective efforts have helped DhobiLite to reach more than 2 lac customers through its mobile app. As summarised by Mr. Nishant Tripathi, the secret to hard work in life comes with overall well-being.
If you would like to know more about DhobiLite, visit http://onelink.to/rgukqa
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