Ex-Bosch Employee Launches 'Dhobhilocker'- A Replacement For Old-age Laundromat System

As a result of increasing urbanization in India, one can see lots of changes in infrastructure and townships. The cities are filled up with multi-storeyed buildings, apartment complexes, etc. Most of these come with lots of facilities. Everything has changed but one thing is still the same- the old age concept of Dhobi or laundromats is still the same.

In India, people clean up their clothes either at their home themselves or go to dry cleaners or laundry per week or fortnight for dropping off or picking up their clothes.
Now the question arises if it is safe in this  COVID-19 pandemic. The answer is a big 'NO'. Nowadays the awareness surrounding the importance of hygiene is making the people switch to everything “contactless”.

Keeping this thing in mind an ex- Bosch employee Srinivas Thali Ramakrishna introduced a new solution to this problem. He used a laundry locker system at his apartment while he was working in Mexico. Then he realized that the same system can also be implemented in the Indian market also. 

There is a laundry locker system in each apartment for the laundromat business owners to pick up on behalf of the customer which enables co-living space which gives convenience to their occupants.

In March 2019, Srinivas develops a SaaS-based platform with the name ‘dhobilocker’ which is a combination of a mobile app platform and digital lockers that provides the customers with 24X7 laundry and dry cleaning services. He launched 'dhobhilocker' as the part of the parent company Invati Technologies.

The end customers can also get their laundry easily without waiting for the weekend or going to laundry stores.

"I first started it in my own apartment. I took permission from my apartment Royal Legend Apartment (Bommanahalli) Association to place a locker and they agreed. Then I contacted a nearby laundry service provider to use the dhobilocker platform for pickup and delivery of garments from customers. The deal with the dry cleaner was to do a revenue sharing with each order. It was a win-win for both because it was an easy acquisition of nearly 350 flats for the laundry service provider with zero investment," Srinivas explains.

 This mobile app system connects the customers with thousands of neighborhood laundromats with virtual laundry stores. The major part of the start-up’s revenue comes from the commission which is earned from laundromats and virtual store partners.

Working Of The System

According to the founder, the working of this system involves five major steps as follows-

1. Customers can drop off the garments in a locker owned by the start-up and placed in the apartment. 
2. Posting that. After that, they can place the order on the ‘dhobilocker’ app by choosing the services that they require as particular.
3. When the request is received, the nearest laundry owner partner collects the garments from the locker.
4. After the cleaning process, the laundromat liver sits back to the same locker.
5. Customers can make the payment and get a new pin to unlock the locker again to collect their laundry after cleaning.

Future Plans

At present time dhobilocker provides its service in several Suburban of Bangalore in next 18 months they started the aims of expanding in cities including Gurugram, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, Chennai, and Coimbatore.