BigBasket Cofounder’s LaundryMate Picks Up INR 50 Cr In Funding

Bengaluru-based laundry startup LaundryMate, founded by BigBasket cofounder Abhinay Choudhari, has raised INR 50 Cr ($6.25 Mn) in Pre-Series A funding from Blume Founders Fund and several angel investors.

The angel investors participating in the funding round include Ola cofounder Ankit Bhati, Boston Consulting Group managing partner Deepak Goyal, Trilegal cofounder Karan Singh and Nutanix India MD Sankalp Saxena, said LaundryMate in a press statement.

Founded in 2021 and launched in October 2022 by Choudhari, Raghavendra Joshi, Tripat Preet Singh, Uday Vijayan, Asad Zaidi and Pushpendra Yaday, LaundryMate services both B2C and B2B verticals.

The startup said it has built India’s largest laundry facility in Bengaluru, claiming to process 65,000 garments per day. LaundryMate added it sourced machines from Belgium, Italy, Turkey, the US and Dubai, along with a water treatment and recycling solution imported from the Netherlands.

Speaking on the fundraise, Choudhari, cofounder and CEO, said, “We have got tremendous response from our customers, and this fundraise will help us scale up fast to become the leader and a preferred laundry brand in Bangalore in the next 6-9 months.”

LaundryMate competes with Laundrywala, UClean and LaundryAnna in the online laundry service segment. While the startup is currently limited to Bengaluru, it plans to expand to 30 cities in the country in the next 10 years.

Per the cofounder, the startup is set to raise a larger Series A round, to the tune of $10-15 Mn, to expand nationally.

Choudhari quit BigBasket in 2021, two days after Tata Digital picked up a majority stake in the grocery delivery unicorn in May 2021. The LaundryMate cofounder has previously worked at Mitsubishi Corp and Infosys.

Per media reports from 2021, LaundryMate had secured $2 Mn in seed capital from its founders and was said to be in talks to raise a Series A round. For now, the startup has secured a bridge round.

“We have had a strong belief in the untapped potential of the ‘industrialisation of laundry’ for everyday consumers,” said Sarita Raichura of the Blume Founders Fund.

India’s laundry market is expected to grow to $15 Bn by 2025 from $11.3 Bn in 2019, according to a 2021 report, ‘India Laundry Services Market’ released by homegrown consulting firm RedSeer.

While India’s startup ecosystem has endured a prolonged funding winter, funding activity has been resurgent over the past few weeks.

On Monday (May 29), D2C home appliances startup Atomberg raised $86 Mn in one of the largest funding rounds of the month. Last week, Indian startups raised $476 Mn in funding across 16 deals, a 2.78X jump from $171 Mn raised by Indian startups between May 15 and May 20 across 18 deals.