Tumbledry - Well Organised Dry Cleaning & Laundry Service Provider

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Laundry is a daily need for people, regardless of their income levels. In the Western world, people have high-quality laundry service that makes their routine easier. Whereas, in India, people had no reliable options to outsource laundry.

Urban Indians only had maids and dhobis who never offered good quality service. Hence, people were either compromising on comfort by doing laundry themselves or they were compromising on quality.

To remove such laundry woes of urban India, TUMBLEDRY was started in 2019. The brand has already established itself as India’s largest laundry & dry clean chain. It is best known for making the Indian laundry industry organized and adding convenience to the lives of its customers.

To know more about how Tumbledry started and grow, keep reading.

Tumbledry - Company Highlights

Tumbledry - About
Tumbledry - Industry
Tumbledry - Founders and Team
Tumbledry - The Idea and Startup Story
Tumbledry - Services
Tumbledry - Business Model and Revenue Model
Tumbledry - Customer Acquisition
Tumbledry - Challenges Faced
Tumbledry - Marketing Campaign
Tumbledry - Growth
Tumbledry - Competitors
Tumbledry - Recognitions and Achievements
Tumbledry - Future Plans

Tumbledry - About

Tumbledry was founded in 2019 with an aim of removing the laundry woes of urban Indians. Today, it is India’s largest laundry & dry clean chain with 250+ stores spread across more than 83 cities.

Their services include: laundry, dry cleaning & shoe cleaning.

With an approach of providing World-class laundry & dry clean services easily accessible to every Indian household, Tumbledry has revolutionized the laundry industry.

They use CRM software to ensure smooth operations and offer mobile apps for their users and delivery boys. This tech-oriented set-up makes their operations smooth. And their customers enjoy convenience with free home pick-up & delivery, easy order placement and tracking via app.

The brand uses high-end Swedish machinery and German eco-friendly chemicals to ensure high-quality laundry & dry clean service.

Tumbledry has also introduced live laundry stores in India which has made common people trust the laundry and dry clean processes.

By working rigorously on trust building, high-quality and customer convenience the brand has clearly acquired a huge customer base.

Now, Tumbledry has the vision to build a hyper-local presence in urban India by having a store within every 3 km radius and reaching every household. The purpose is to be as easily accessible as local dhobis or laundromats. And for this, they are aiming to have 1000 live stores by 2025.

Tumbledry - Industry

The laundry industry was valued at $35.83 billion in FY 2020. Tumbledry’s founders studied the potential of the laundry industry and found that this industry is bigger than the mainstream industries like Diagnostic Labs ($28.6BN), Beauty & Wellness ($9BN), and Fast Food Restaurants ($4.6BN), etc. Furthermore, the laundry industry is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 4.96% through FY2026.

Tumbledry - Founders and Team

Tumbledry has been founded by Naveen Chawla, Gaurav Nigam, Gaurav Teotia, Tarun Arora, and Anuj Gupta.

Mr Naveen Chawla is the Co-founder & Director of Tumbledry. He has 25+ years of experience across Consumer durables, Telecom and FMCG industries. He has served in various senior leadership profiles like COO, Product Head and Business Head across reputed organizations like Airtel, Britannia, Reliance and LAVA.

Mr Gaurav Nigam is the Co-founder & Director of Tumbledry. He is a business leader with 17+ years of experience across the Consumer Durables and Telecom industry. He has served as Product head and Customer Service Head in reputed organizations like LAVA & Airtel.

Mr Gaurav Teotia is the Co-founder & Business Head of Tumbledry. Rank holder at IIM Ahmedabad & Gold Medalist at IIT Dhanbad, Gaurav Teotia has 7+ years of experience across Strategy, Business Planning & Sales in reputed organizations like Airtel, LAVA & DRDO.

Mr Tarun Arora is the Co-founder & Head of Franchise Network. He has 16+ years of experience across Telecom and FMCG domains in building large-scale Distribution & Franchisee Network for top-notch organizations like Airtel and Reliance Jio.

Mr Anuj Gupta is the Co-founder & Head of Brand & Digital. With 7+ years of experience across Telecom and IT, playing a significant role in Customer Service delivery and Franchisee Planning.

Tumbledry - The Idea and Startup Story

During their professional excursions to USA, Europe & South East Asia, Tumbledry’s co-founders realized that laundry services are evolving into a major industry and most of the populace were outsourcing these services. However, in India almost 96% of the laundry industry was unorganized, people were either doing laundry themselves or were dependent on others like maids, and dhobis.

Doing laundry at home is very time-consuming & additionally one has to go through the daily rigmarole of washing & ironing clothes with limited drying places. Whereas outsourcing it to unorganized channels is a considerable compromise on the wash quality & hygiene due to the low-quality water & detergents used & mixing of the clothes with others while washing, not to mention the heavy toll it takes on the costly fabric.

After realizing these issues, they both came to a thought of solving the laundry woes of Indians by introducing – Tumbledry, a chain of live laundry & dry cleaning stores.

However, before actually coming up with a business model they analysed laundry as a business opportunity on six parameters:

• Lack of Competition
• Potential of growth
• Scope of uniqueness
• Financial prospects
• Comparison to traditional businesses
• Ease in operations

They saw laundry has very low competition, high growth prospects. This industry had immense scope of uniqueness and financial prospects were good too. Along with this, they found that the laundry business can grow better and faster than traditional businesses due to huge unaddressed demand. At last, they found that operating a laundry business is easy too.

These findings made them sure about the future success of their business and they launched Tumbledry.

Tumbledry - Services

The brand provides World-class Laundry, Dry Clean, and Shoe Cleaning services.

Tumbledry uses high-end Swedish machines and German eco-friendly, bio-degradable chemicals for washing clothes and Italian equipment to steam iron them for a wrinkle-free crisp finish. Hygiene being the key focus, they wash each customer’s clothes separately and follow all Covid 19 guidelines prescribed by WHO and CDC.

Their laundry service is categorized into:

• Wash & fold
• Wash & Steam Iron
• Premium laundry

They have adopted the latest Lagoon technology to provide high-quality dry cleaning service for bridal wear, haute couture, woollens, lehenga, suits, leather articles, soft toys, suitcases, blankets, curtains, carpets, etc.

Having expertise in cleaning & repairing suede, canvas, sports, leather, nubuck shoes, heels and all other types of footwear, they offer the best shoe cleaning & restoration services. They are pro at handling footwear from high-street brands including Louis Vuitton, Prada, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin.

Their USPs include:

• 100% garment care label adherence
• Zero shrinkage
• Colour restoration for old/faded garments
• Colour bleeding proof process
• 99% stain removal
• Whitex technology for three shades brighter whites

Innovation at Tumbledry

• Opaque functionality to 100% Transparency - People didn’t know what happens to their clothes once they send them for laundry. They didn’t know what sort of chemicals, water and methods were used for cleaning and washing. Tumbledry launched live stores where the clothes and other items are washed in front of customers. This established trust among customers.
• Labour-oriented to mechanism driven - Generally, even professional dry cleaners in India do not use advanced machines and the industry was majorly labour-oriented. It had massive growth prospects if only the approach could be changed. So, Tumbledry team made laundry a mechanism-driven industry. Instead of using age-old traditional methods and machinery, they imported the latest Swedish machines and Pro-Fabric chemicals from Germany. Having machinery from trusted brands like LG and Electrolux enhanced the quality of laundry and improved their credibility as a business as well. They saw great improvements in quality and productivity.
• Pen-paper industry now runs on the web - Laundry was more like a “pen-paper industry”. From taking orders to billing, everything was done on paper. Tumbledry shifted to a sound digital infrastructure and made laundry a modern-day service. At Tumbledry, they offer web-based CRM for order management and mobile apps. The brand uses two different apps for consumers and runners to keep operations uncomplicated.

Tumbledry - Business Model and Revenue Model

They have a franchise business model where an area of 10000 relevant households is allocated to a franchise. Franchise set up costs 25 Lakhs which includes everything from franchise fees to purchase & installation of machines, store interiors, branding material etc. They provide all round support to their franchise partners in setting up and running the stores and collect 7.5% of revenue as royalty from its franchises.

The main revenue of the franchise is driven by Laundry, Dry Cleaning and Shoe cleaning services. Tumbledry focuses on high-quality, trust building and offering convenience. This works perfectly in their favour and they do great business in all cities (Tier 1, Tier2 & Tier 3). Their partners achieve operational break-even within just 3 months of launching their store. After that Tumbledry stores enjoy a monthly profit of 1.25 to 1.75 lakh depending on the city there are running in. Their partners enjoy up to 84% annual ROI and are able to recover their investment within just 24-30 months of launching their store.

After witnessing the high success rate of Tumbledry stores, 15% of their partners have opened their 2nd or more stores. Today, 35% of their total stores are owned by these partners alone.

Tumbledry - Customer Acquisition

Tumbledry started with its first store in Noida. During that initial phase, they focused on offline marketing strategies because live laundry & dry clean stores were a new concept for people. Be it, people, from low-income levels, the middle class, or the richer sections of society, laundry was mostly done at home with the help of machines or maids. Dhobis were there, and the services were low cost too but they were unreliable. Tumbledry brought a paradigm shift to this scenario by making people realize that it is better to outsource laundry to a reliable organized brand like Tumbledry. They felt that they need to introduce this new concept at the ground level. And for this purpose, they focused on man-to-man marketing.

From putting canopies, banners and flyers to making door-to-door and society visits, they did everything. Tumbledry even made tie-ups with local grocery stores, parlours, salons and other places having high local walk-ins. They presented their service at kitty party venues and other such places. Because they wanted to convince people of the quality and convenience offered at Tumbledry stores, they gave first orders free or free trial orders. After the first free order, they provided two orders at a subsidized price so that the customers can get used to their services. Thereafter, the brand sold package memberships so that people can become their regular customers.

There are two factors that have always worked in their favour for both acquiring and retaining customers - Quality & Convenience. It worked for them as a double blessing. By offering world-class services and ensuring absolute convenience, Tumbledry won hearts and people referred their services to friends and family on a massive scale. While this made them gain new customers, high quality of services also made their old customers stick to them. And once the brand became a trusted name, they shifted to the next round of marketing which was Digital Marketing.

They have always focused on a “Customer-first” policy. It has helped them back in past and it is still making them grow. After seeing their clothes being treated well at live stores, customers got satisfied with us. Then, a majority of them bought their packages and became their regular customers.

Tumbledry - Challenges Faced

The prime challenge was matching the price of Tumbledry service to the cost of doing laundry at home. They knew they cannot make it big by ensuring convenience and quality alone because customers are cost-sensitive. So, they matched their prices to the cost of doing laundry at home.

Customers worry about the financial and emotional value of their clothes. A load of just 30 clothes might have a minimum cost of 10,000-15,000 to the customers. When people send their clothes to Tumbledry stores they trust the company with their belongings. And building this element of trust was another major challenge for the brand.

Tumbledry - Marketing Campaign

When their dry clean and laundry business took off, they introduced “shoe cleaning and restoration”. To spread awareness about this new service they ran “Refer a friend” campaign. Under this campaign, their customers were supposed to refer Tumbledry to their friends, on every new referral order, both the customers would get a free shoe cleaning service. This worked great in their favour as this campaign brought them new customers for two services: dry cleaning and shoe cleaning.

Tumbledry - Growth

Tumbledry has become India’s largest laundry chain and serves 2 lacs+ regular customers at their 250+ stores in 25 states and 83+ cities. They are growing exponentially in the metros as well as in Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities. At present, 51% of stores are successfully running in Tier 2 & Tier 3 cities.

They started in 2019. In FY 2020 Tumbledry's revenue grew by 57%. Then in 2021, it grew by 138%. And owing to the current growth, they are projecting a 175% hike in its revenue in comparison to 2021.

Tumbledry - Competitors

Some of the top competitors of Tumbledry are:

• Guardini
• Pressto
• Dhobilite
• My Cleaners
• Ashoka
• Westend
• Liberty
• Beekay

Tumbledry - Recognitions and Achievements

The Biggest achievement of Tumbledry is that they have become India’s largest laundry & dry clean with 250+ stores spread across 83+ cities. They have registered themselves with StartupIndia. Some other achievements of Tumbledry are listed below:

• The Founder & Director of Tumbledry, Mr Gaurav Nigam was recently awarded the Centurion Achiever Award by DLAI (Drycleaners & Launderers Association of India).
• It has been featured among the Top 10 most promising start-ups by Silicon India.
• Tumbledry has been featured among the top 10 retail start-ups of 2021 by CEO Insights.

Tumbledry - Future Plans

They have planned to be a household name for laundry & dry cleaning in India by expanding their business.

• By 2025: Aiming to open 1000 live stores across India.

FAQs

When was Tumbledry founded?

Tumbledry was founded in 2019 in Noida.

Who is the founder of Tumbledry?

Tumbledry was founded by Naveen Chawla, Gaurav Nigam, Gaurav Teotia, Tarun Arora, and Anuj Gupta.

What are the services offered by Tumbledry?

Tumbledry offers services:

• Dry-cleaning
• Shoe-cleaning
• Premium laundry

Does Tumbledry operate across India?

Yes, Tumbledry operates in 83+ cities in India.