An international jury of PTC professionals listened to 46 pitches across three categories – industrial textile services, retail textile cleaning-SME and retail textile cleaning-Big before determining the winners of the CINET Global Awards 2022, announced in Milan last month.
Three Indian ventures made their mark on the global stage by being recognised as exceptional among their international peers. Tumbledry India won an award for Excellence of Entrepreneurship and was ranked fifth in the retail textile cleaning-Big category, Beepee Puretex Pvt Ltd was the country winner of the Global Best Practices Awards Program (GBPAP 22) and ranked second in the industrial textile services category, while Laundrokart won the retail textile cleaning-Big category Award.
These winners competed and won against the world’s best laundry industry leaders, and deserve our heartiest congratulations. Mohana M, Editor, Clean India Journal, was part of the jury that nominated contenders from India for these awards. Clean India Journal captures first hand information from the winners. Here’s a glimpse…
Gaurav Nigam, Director & Founder, Tumbledry Solutions Private Limited
It is a matter of pride and pleasure to represent India and the Indian laundry sector on a global platform. More than 100 companies from 30 countries participated in the awards. Amongst them, Tumbledry was recognized for its outstanding approach toward the laundry business with an award for Excellence Entrepreneurship.
CINET lauded our excellent business model which has revolutionised the Indian laundry industry. It is our robust business model, which is successful in not just metros but also in Tier 3 cities, that has helped Tumbledry to become the largest laundry chain in India with 400+ outlets across 130+ cities within a span of three years, out of which two were impacted by Covid-19.
Our 360 degree support system for franchise partners, from opening the store to generating revenue for the store is the strongest pillar of our business model. 95% of our stores operationally break even within 3 months of launch. We are the only laundry brand globally to have an in-house academy for hiring and training manpower for stores. This is one of the major business propositions that we offer.
Our business model has helped freshers who wanted to enter into the laundry sector to successfully set up profitable ventures. Once again, I would like to thank CINET for understanding our innovative business model and recognising us with the PTC Award Of Excellence Entrepreneurship for 2022.”
Anup Poddar, Director, Beepee Enterprise Pvt Ltd and
Jash Dalal, CEO, Beepee Puretex Ltd
How does it feel to be recognised on the global stage?
It is an extremely proud feeling. To be the bearer of the Indian flag at the event and representing your country on a global platform is a feeling like no other. We are happy that our country has a global footprint in the laundry industry. All the hard work in the last decade is now being recognised. This serves as an example for other laundry companies in India, to strive for excellence as we are on par with other countries when it comes to technology, technical know-how and best practices.
Our parent company Beepee Group has been supplying hospitality linen globally for decades and this recognition just reinforces the trust in our quality and services. We are even more excited to provide best in class linen and linen rental services to more hotels.
You’ve also been ranked second in the Industrial Textile Services category. What best practices do you follow to be ranked thus?
Our 360 degree approach to a business has got us the 2nd rank in the world. While productivity and profitability is key to every business, we do it differently. Instead of adding more and more resources to become efficient and profitable, we use the resources we have and recycle them to achieve the same goal.
With every decision we want to make, we ask ourselves – ‘How sustainable is this?’ Only a positive response is taken forward. That’s it!
Some key practices include:
- Linen Rental
- Three stage effluent treatment with RO
- Over two-thirds of the water used is recycled and reused.
- Condensate return is stored and reused in the steam boilers.
- Programs and chemical formulations have been tweaked to save over 2,300 litres per hour
- Waste exhaust flu gas heat is used to heat water
- Circular textiles
In the coming years, what concrete plans do you have to further improve your SOPs and services?
As we always say, and strongly believe, that sustainability is not a one-time effort. It is an ongoing and ever changing process.
With new technology coming in every year, we plan to set leaner SOPs to increase efficiency. We look at this achievement as a starting point to improve our services to conform to international standards, thus bringing best practices and services to our customers.
By the end of 2023, we plan to be the first laundry in India to have a ZLD Policy (Zero Liquid Discharge).
Ravi Raghav, Founder & CEO, Laundrokart
How does it feel to be recognised on the global stage?
Winning an award always feels great, especially on the global stage where you’re competing against established companies; however, the steps leading towards it are far more significant. We are very thankful to our customers who have trusted us so far in our journey and will continue to strive for the best practices for them.
You’ve been ranked seventh globally in the RTC-BIG category. What best practices do you follow to be ranked thus?
In the laundry and dry cleaning industry, there is no secret sauce for success. Having said that, there are still a few steps which are required to achieve great results and customer delight.
At LaundroKart, we firmly believe that technology is the only way forward for a scalable and profitable business which can compete on any stage:
- Tech: Tech it or leave it. Without having the right scalable technology, you cannot sustain growth in this business. Using innovative technology, we can multitask, such as taking care of booking and managing orders, easy scheduling, tracking every stage of the orders, and helping customers pay us online and many more functions with one mobile app.
- Trained staff: We have fabric specialists hired from 5 Star hotels who are well trained and have hands-on experience to deal with any stain or cleaning service required for each unique type of cloth.
- Sustainability: We have stopped using dry cleaning chemicals (Perchloroethylene-PERC) and moved to green chemicals like hydrocarbon & wet cleaning agents. Use of high-tech geysers (Rinnai) for hot water reduces consumption of power (by up to 80%, rather than sourcing hot water from traditional electrical geysers. Modern wet cleaning machines give flexibility over the wash cycle by garment types, hence reducing processing time, energy & water.
In the coming years, what concrete plans do you have to further improve your SOPs and services?
We got the opportunity to see and learn from our global companies across the world who all participated in the CINET Global Awards. Comparing them to where we are, I think there is a lot of scope of improvement in our business. Especially in terms of sustainability – hence, we’ll be moving towards green earth chemicals like silicone-based solvents in the immediate future. We are also working on launching a new, more scalable niche service in the cleaning segment.
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