Wassup acquires on-demand laundry brand Chamak, to enter handymen service sector soon
Hybrid laundry platform Wassup has acquired angel funded Chamak for an undisclosed amount in all equity deal (no cash involved in transaction). With this, the acquiree also announced its foray into Mumbai, Pune, Cochin and Delhi.
Wassup offers laundry, dryclean, shoes and bag refurbishments in 11 territories. The company claims to have 30 pickup points called ‘Aggregating Hubs’ in the current cities. Wassup follows franchise model and plans to have 60 hubs(adding 30 to the current 30 hubs) across 20 territories in next six months.
Founded in 2008, Chamak has strong presence in Mumbai and is backed by Kensington Capital, Index Advisory, Innosight Ventures, Calvert Investments and HNIs including Rajan Mariwala and Mr.Sandeep Tandon.
Currently offering personal and corporate laundry service, Wassup plans to become horizontal service platform and plans to enter into personal, home care, car, pet and handymen services as well. This is a bit surprising given the fact that horizontal service platforms (earlier) like Doormint and Tooler squeezed their focus to laundry only.
YourStory’s take
Laundry market in India is highly unorganized (over 95 percent) and hailed as big opportunity as Rs 200,000 crores. The sector is slated to grow as more middle-class people with better access to mobile technology are outsourcing their laundry pain.
On demand laundry service is picking up in metros and currently a slew of startups have entered the space. While marketplace approach seems to be chased by horizontal handymen focused startups, laundry only platforms prefer to have their own setups.
Unlike other service oriented plants (machinery) laundry requires minor investment. Besides Wassup, startups like Tooler also started in-house laundry setup in Delhi.
Wassup competes with Snowhite and Presto on offline front while Bengaluru-based MyWash, Doormint, Tooler, Pick My Laundry including some horizontal platforms like Housejoy, and Zimmber.