From barcode tracking and cloud-based operations to sneaker-cleaning machines and sustainability concerns, India’s organised laundry industry is quietly transforming into a highly system-driven business. In a recent podcast discussion, three entrepreneurs shared how operational discipline, customer trust and technology now define a sector long perceived as informal and fragmented. Clean India Journal speaks to experts in the business.
Not every business idea begins in a boardroom. Some begin at home — with a family watching expensive clothes return from the laundry damaged and discoloured.
For Amber Raul, Managing Director at German Laundry, that frustration eventually became a business opportunity. “My mother used to spend a lot on laundry and there were always complaints about clothes coming back ruined. That’s when my dad got the idea to fill this gap. If we were spending so much on laundry anyway, why not start our own?” recalls Amber, who set up the company in 2011.
Those experiences formed the centre of a recent podcast, Laundry Lounge, hosted by Clean India Journal, where three entrepreneurs from very different backgrounds discussed how they entered the laundry business through observation, experimentation and instinct rather than inheritance.
Different Backgrounds
For Sagar Sodha, National Head – Laundry Services at Jyothy Labs, the attraction was the scale hidden behind what most people still viewed as a simple neighbourhood business. A Chartered Accountant by profession, he was exploring opportunities in the consumer services sector when organised laundry in India was still largely untapped.
“While most saw it as a mom-and-pop operation, I saw the potential beneath it,” he says. “I think I might probably be the only CA in India handling a laundry business,” he adds with a laugh.
Today, he oversees a rapidly expanding network spread across multiple cities. According to him, his finance background became an operational advantage. “It is not only about understanding the Profit and Loss but about how to grow the business,” he explains.
Rishi Rathod, Founder and CEO of WeClean, entered the sector from a completely different direction. Growing up in a family involved in fabric imports and exports meant he already understood textiles, dyes and washes, but laundry was never the original plan.
Before entering the business, he explored other entrepreneurial ideas, including opening a large entertainment and bowling facility. The investment required eventually pushed him toward something smaller and more practical.
“That is when I zeroed down on the laundry space,” he says.
For Sagar, however, scaling nationally brought a completely different challenge: consistency. His company now operates across more than 57 cities with over 200 stores.
“When you move from being a regional player to a national player, the entire strategy changes. Behind every new city lies SOPs, systems, process mapping, training and operational discipline. Scaling laundry nationally is far more complex than what most people see from the outside,” he says.
Comparing the business to aviation, he points out that consistency is often invisible until something goes wrong. “When you do your work properly every day, nobody notices. But one bad day immediately creates negative feedback,” he observes.
Amber agrees. According to him, an individual store may process nearly 200 orders a day while balancing standard and express deliveries.
“It’s a complete process chain. One customer’s garment cannot disappear among thousands of others. Every single piece has to move through steaming, quality checks and delivery within the promised timeline,” he says.
Customer Behaviour
The founders agree that customer behaviour remains one of the most unpredictable aspects of the business.
According to Rishi, the challenge rarely lies in one large order but in the fragmented and urgent nature of daily requests. “One customer suddenly wants garments back within hours because they have a flight to catch,” he says.
Customers also bring in far more than garments. Shoes, bags, curtains and carpets have become regular categories.
“There are different categories of customers. Some are okay if you return the items after a couple of days while some are always in a rush. Some remember us only twice or thrice a year for curtains or carpets, while some give us everything,” says Rishi.
New Obsession
The discussion soon shifted to specialised shoe care — a segment that has grown rapidly after the pandemic and the rise of sneaker culture among younger consumers.
“We have specialised shoe-cleaning machines and equipment. You cannot just put shoes into a regular dryer or wash them like garments. Different parts of the shoe require different cleaning processes, detergents and drying methods,” says Amber.
Technology, he explains, has dramatically reduced turnaround time. “If one person manually cleans a shoe, it could take almost half an hour for a single pair. With these machines, cleaning can be done in two minutes.”
Amber also points out that sneaker collectors are extremely particular about detailing. “Even the smallest dot or mark matters to them because they want those perfectly clean shoes back in their wardrobe,” he says.
Emotional Value
That emotional attachment towards garments remains central to the business.
Whether it is an ordinary shirt or an expensive designer outfit, customers often associate strong emotional value with what they hand over for cleaning.
“When it comes to volume versus value, every garment has to be given equal importance in the factory,” says Sagar. “You have to train your teams in a manner where every garment matters.”
The founders were also candid about one uncomfortable reality: damages cannot be eliminated completely.
“Damages are an integral part of the laundry industry; every 0.1% garment that comes to you will get damaged. No matter how hard you try, this will happen because human errors cannot be avoided completely,” says Rishi.
Sagar adds that most “damage” is often not catastrophic. “It may involve colour bleeding, shrinkage or unexpected fabric reactions and you need to have processes in place to handle such occurrences.”
Alongside damage, garment loss remains another major fear among customers. Organised laundries now rely heavily on barcoding systems, scanning checkpoints and software integrations to minimise such risks.
“If systems are not in place, even 10 garments can go missing. But if proper systems exist, then even at very large volumes, garments should not get lost,” says Sagar.
Amber explains that every stage — pickup, workshop entry, washing, packaging and delivery — is tracked digitally. “We know exactly which department the garment is lying in and where it is moving,” he says.
Tech Systems
Technology and software now play a central role in organised laundry operations.
All three entrepreneurs spoke about building customised in-house systems rather than relying entirely on third-party platforms.
“The older you are in the business, the more you learn and refine your systems. Our in-house software today tracks multiple cities and outlets through a single integrated system,” says Sagar.
Amber describes how his company developed a customised CRM platform integrating stores, workshops, logistics and customer communication into one ecosystem. “We keep changing our processing systems every few years and we cannot expect that from other software. So, we decided to develop our own,” he explains.
Rishi, however, points out that digitisation comes with its own challenges. “Yes, customization is important, but to what extent? Today, I can customize a software to make it as beautiful as I feel it should be. But is the customer going to download it? Is the customer going to use it?” he asks.
According to him, the primary role of software is operational visibility rather than customer engagement. “Our model is mainly towards how we can showcase on a real-time basis where the garment is in the facility and at what stage it is in,” he says.
Sustainability Focus
The discussion eventually moved towards sustainability — an area organised laundries can no longer ignore.
From packaging materials and water recycling to chemical usage and waste management, customers are becoming increasingly aware of environmentally responsible practices.
“It is very easy to say that you are eco-friendly. But somebody actually has to work on it,” says Sagar.
The founders also discussed the gradual shift away from perc towards hydrocarbon alternatives in dry cleaning. While perc is still widely used for its effectiveness, hydrocarbon solutions are increasingly being adopted as safer and more sustainable alternatives.
“Changes are happening very fast. Over the next five years, the industry will evolve even further,” the founders believe.
Customer Loyalty
Despite technology and scale, the founders repeatedly returned to one defining factor: trust.
For Sagar, customer loyalty is what makes laundry different from many modern consumer businesses. “The business may look dirty from the outside,” he says with a laugh, “but if done in a very organised manner, you can build a very large and very consistent business out of this sector.”
Amber says what attracted him most was the sheer size of the unorganised market. Industry estimates value the sector at nearly Rs 2 lakh crore, with almost 90% still unorganised.
Hard Truths
As the discussion neared its conclusion, the founders spoke about one of the biggest misconceptions customers have: the belief that laundry can restore an old garment to a completely new condition.
“People think an old garment will come back looking completely new,” they point out.
“When luxury designers create outfits, they create them for appearance, not necessarily for dry cleaning. The moment some of these garments go into a machine, they can get completely damaged,” says Rishi.
According to Rishi, one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is scaling too quickly without understanding local demand. “People open stores rapidly without proper market research. Location, residential density and local marketing play a massive role in whether a store succeeds,” he says.
Sagar, however, defends the franchise model when backed by strong operational systems. “A franchise works only when both the brand and the partner grow together,” he explains.
For young entrepreneurs considering the sector, Rishi offers simple advice: “Work inside a laundry for a few months first. Only then do you truly understand what this business demands.”
And perhaps that captures the industry best. Behind the simple act of cleaning garments lies a business built equally on systems, trust, operational discipline, customer relationships and relentless patience — even if most customers still continue to see it through the familiar lens of the neighbourhood dhobi.