A revolution that is just beginning, and Pressmate is spearheading it. It’s a revolution of the laundry industry that’s just starting and Pressmate is at the helm.
For years the laundry industry has been in the shadows. Many of the business segments, such as neighborhood ironing parlors, family laundromats and commercial laundromats rely on manual operations, outdated processes, and human connections.
However, the consumer expectations are shifting and convenience is becoming a factor, as is the new digital services, which are starting to transform the industry. Today, customers want door-to-door delivery, updates in real-time, quick delivery, e-payment options, and service reliability. Meanwhile, laundry companies are struggling with staffing issues, increasing expenses, customer retention, and restricted automation.
That’s where tech firms like Pressmate are seeking to make a bigger change…
Pressmate founders, Bajrang Saharan, and co-founder, Pradeep Sonkar an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, who envisions the company as a “full operating system for the world’s laundry and premium garment care industry.
The company’s business model differs from the traditional laundry business. Pressmate isn’t just looking to open up more outlets, it’s looking to develop technology that can assist current laundry companies to digitalize their operations, automate processes, manage customers, track garments, enhance delivery systems and grow more efficiently.
The goal wasn’t to create another laundry operation, or even another software company, Saharan said. We wanted to create the digital backbone for the global laundry and premium garment-care industry.”
The company was working with the laundry industry for nearly 18 months before it began to create its technology platform, learning about the challenges laundry operators face on a daily basis. The team discovered that a significant number of businesses had ongoing reliance on manual order fulfillment, disjointed systems, restricted customer information, and manual methods.
Instead of creating the software, Pressmate used its own laundry to serve as a real test and research facility. The company analysed real customer orders and operational data to gain insight into business time, money and customer leakage.
Eventually they developed Pressmate OS
It collects functions like Artificial Intelligence, garment tracking with RFID, ERP and CRM applications, customer applications, route optimalization, business intelligence, and others.
The objective is not just to integrate technology with a laundry company, it’s to tie it all together with a single system, the company said.
The trip was far from easy, however.
During its early years, Pressmate was, at times, considered a laundry company or a very specialized software company. Saharan says at the time, they decided to get the results and not just move on the perception by means of marketing.
The company’s operating model reportedly resulted in an 86.6% repeat customer ratio, highlighting the value of a consistent and trust-based service in a customer-centric industry.
“Customers are not going back for the software.” They come back due to the regular service, delivery, clarity of communication, trust, and convenience.
In this instance, technology provides a means of enabling. Pressmate claims to make service quality more consistent by offering several services to businesses to help them manage orders, track garments, communicate with customers and improve their delivery services.
The company has also experienced great growth, and its business is expanding rapidly as more and more consumers and operators shift to organized and technology-based garment-care services. But, the most important thing that Saharan has learned from scaling is that growth should not rely solely on hard work, she says.
Strong systems are key to scaling, he said. One of our biggest product roadmaps is now customer feedback.
The company is also diversifying its business from software. Its long-term ecosystem includes AI-driven tools, employee training, hardware integration, customer engagement solutions, solvent solutions and business intelligence.
This more comprehensive approach is indicative of the wider movement that is happening in traditional industries. Technology firms are getting more creative and are launching new operating systems in poorly organized industries, such as paintballing.
In a business like Pressmate, the opportunity is to enable customers of all sizes to embrace technology without compromising the personal service that they appreciate.
The company’s ambition is world-wide. For the next five to ten years Pressmate hopes that its technology will become a standard component of laundry and custom care operations all over the world.
But Saharan’s favorite headline encapsulates that objective:
“India’s Pressmate is the next global market leader for the future of laundry and garment care.”
<p>The post The Indian Startup Turning a Traditional Laundry Business into a Technology Industry first appeared on Hello Entrepreneurs.</p>
