Laundry services startup Wassup buys Ezeewash, eyes more acquisitions

Chennai-based on-demand laundry and dry-cleaning services startup Wassup has acquired Ezeewash, a Hyderabad-based launderette, in an all-equity deal, even as it scouts for more acquisitions to power its expansion across India.

With this acquisition, Laundry Project India Pvt Ltd, which runs Wassup, will start offering its services in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad.

"We will continue to grow organically and also through acquisitions across other cities. We are also extremely excited about the host of new initiatives we are launching in the next two quarters," said Balachandar R, co-founder and CEO, Wassup.

Late last year, Wassup had acquired Mumbai-based express laundry service provider Chamak for an undisclosed amount.

Wassup currently offers its services in seven cities – Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin and Pune. It plans to establish its presence in 100 cities in the next three years.

As part of the deal, Ravi Kumar Pinjala, founder and CEO of Ezeewash, run by F9 Enterprises Pvt Ltd, will be appointed as vice president for Wassup's AP and Telangana operations, a statement from Wassup said.

Wassup, which operates as an aggregator, offers services such as laundry and dry cleaning as well as shoes and bag refurbishment. It was founded by Durga Das and Balachandar R in 2012. Das is a serial entrepreneur with about 20 years of work experience in Silicon Valley companies. Before co-founding Wassup, Balachandar headed the retail practice for Hidesign.

In May 2015, Wassup raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from Arun Chandra Mohan and Praveen Sinha, co-founders of Rocket Internet-incubated lifestyle e-tailer Jabong.com.

Other investors in the company include B S Nagesh, non-executive vice-chairman of Shoppers Stop, former Barclays India chief executive Mani Subramanian, Reflex Industries chairman and managing director T Anil Jain and Wyeth India's former MD Ranga Iyer.

The laundry services space has seen the entry of several startups, with some experimenting with an asset-light aggregator model while others have preferred to go for in-house processing units or tie-ups with institutional laundries. Varied industry estimates put the size of the household laundry market in the top ten cities in India between Rs13,000 crore and Rs 26,000 crore. Several home services startups also offer laundry services. The segment has also seen its share of buyouts with home services marketplace Housejoy acquiring on-demand laundry services provider MyWash in February this year.

Meanwhile, last month laundry startup OneClickWash raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Unitus Seed Fund. In February, Jaipur-based Urban Dhobi also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from angel investors Vinod Bansal and Sanjeev Singhal. In November 2015, on-demand laundry service platform Flashdoor raised angel funding led by former Flipkart executive Sujeet Kumar. In 2015, PickMyLaundry, a mobile platform that facilitates booking and delivery of laundry services had raised $100,000 from Green House Ventures.