Wassup Acquires Doormint; Investors Kalaari And Helion To Join Company Board

Chennai-based on-demand laundry services startup Wassup has acquired Mumbai-based home services platform Doormint in a full equity deal.

Post-acquisition, Doormint investors Kalaari Capital and Helion Ventures will hold equity in Wassup Laundry. Wassup is only acquiring the tech and infrastructure assets of Doormint and the team will not join the startup post acquisition.

Founded in 2011 by Balachandar R and Durga Das, Wassup is an on-demand service provider which currently offers services like laundry, dry cleaning, shoes, and bag refurbishments at the user’s doorstep.

Currently operational in seven cities – Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Cochin, Wassup is eyeing pan-India expansion.

Talking about future plans for the startup, co-founder of Wassup, Balachandar said, “We are looking at a revenue of 100 Cr in 3 years time. This will be achieved as a combination of B2B , B2C and franchise laundromat business.” Wassup currently serves over a 1000 orders monthly with a ticket-size of INR 300.

Rajesh Raju, Managing Director of Kalaari Capital said, “Wassup Laundry has shown the potential to weather difficult market conditions. We have seen the online laundry space go through rough times but believe that Wassup has a unique hybrid model with strong unit economics and a brand of national presence that can be leveraged to create a leading laundry brand in India.” Post-acquisition, he will be on the advisory board of the company.

In February 2016, Wassup secured $3.2 Mn in a Pre-Series A round from existing investors which included Anil Jain (MD at Refex Energy), HNIs from India, and the Middle East. Earlier in April 2016, the company had expanded its operations to Hyderabad by acquiring another on-demand startup Ezeewash in a full equity deal.

On the other hand, Doormint shut down its operations in September 2016. The development was confirmed by the founder Abhinav Agarwal. An email sent to the users stated, “As of 19 September, DoorMint will not be accepting any new orders. All the orders in the system will be processed.”

Doormint was started in September 2014, by three IIT alumni Abhinav Agarwal, Naman Lahoty, and Piyush Ranjan, in a bid to solve the pain points of home service professionals while they were residing in Mumbai. In August 2015, Doormint had raised $3 Mn as a part of Series A funding led by Helion Venture Partners along with Kalaari Capital.

Other startups in this segment include Laundryprime, UrbanDhobi, Super Dhobi, Hello Dhobi, PickMyLaundry, Laundrywala, LaundryAnna, etc.