This startup can wash your car in under three liters of water
Jasmeet Singh's life was quite uneventful until one day, when he was travelling on a highway in Germany and observed a car wash center every 10 minutes of his drive. This was when he realized the potential for a similar service in India and started Speed Car Wash - A car cleaning service in Ludhiana. One little known fact about speed Car wash is eco friendliness, using only two-three liters of water to clean a car!! Yes, that is less water than a person drinks per day.
Speed Car wash was started in 2011 by Jasmeet Singh and Pushpinder Singh. Born and brought up in Karnal in Haryana, Jasmeet was educated in Delhi and joined NIIT after completing his MBA in 2004. It was at NIIT where Jasmeet was exposed to the franchise model and decided to try it out in his venture. Pushpinder Singh, co-founder, has over 15 years of experience in managing big businesses with large manpower.
They started their business under the brand name Liv India Group and two services under it, Speed Car Wash and Cozi Cars. The former, as the name suggests, is a car washing service where the primary aim is to not waste your time by going to a center and waiting for an hour to get you vehicle cleaned. Stations are based in parking lots of malls and other busy areas where your car gets cleaned by the time you finish watching a movie or have lunch with your family. Cozi Cars is a mobile car-detailing platform – essentially a vehicle that comes to your door to clean and work on the cosmetics of your vehicle, be it seats or a minor paint job.
Fortunately for Jasmeet, things weren't as difficult as they got an offer for franchise while they were operating their first Car wash center in Ludhiana. Within six months they were able to expand to six franchises and since then their journey has been good.
"The major revenues come with recurring orders from our existing units and intermesh of royalties we get. Currently I see a huge gap in terms of numbers of cars sold in India and being serviced. With over 35 million vehicles on road in India, we are the 5th largest in the world and increasing at the rate of 10 percent every year. This industry is estimated to become third largest by 2025 going by this rate. By 2025 every third car manufactured will be sold in India. Since the number of cars will increase, there would be a high demand for car washing business and detailing services. And because cars are our business and cars are growing, therefore I see a huge potential of our business in India and which will grow with time," Jasmeet says.
The average ticket size is around 1200-1500 rupees with about 10-12 cars coming in during weekdays at most franchises and about 30 cars during weekends. Fortunately with moving car stations every day is like a weekend, as people do not have to disrupt their schedule for the cars. At present they have franchises in Coimbatore, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana and are looking to expand in more places.
The concept of mobile car wash is a very unique one and with increasing number of vehicles on the road, this can only increase. And also looking at their franchise model this is going to increase and will get adopted by masses. It is only a matter of time before more people come forward and start replicating this model.