Housejoy moves to take its rivals to the cleaners

Photo credit: Pixabay

They will drive, clean, plumb, paint, and wash their way into the homes of busy Indians. For startups in India who are connecting these service providers with the masses, it’s a hot US$7 billion  market.

For them, one path to growth is ensuring quality professionals, so the happy customer lets them in every time there are some cobwebs to be dusted. But there is another, perhaps quicker, path too.  Yes, we are talking acquisitions.

That’s the path Bangalore-based startup Housejoy has just trodden by picking up niche player MyWash, an on-demand dry-cleaning and laundry firm.

“Laundry is strategic to Housejoy. The MyWash team […] has demonstrated the best operational knowhow to scale laundry. We now have the possibility to accelerate the growth in laundry,” Saran Chatterjee, Housejoy CEO, said in a statement today.

Housejoy was founded just a year ago by Sunil Goel and Arjun Kumar. It operates in big cities like Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, and Delhi and partners with more than 10,000 service providers.

Big fish, small fish

Photo credit: Olga Kuba

Lately several startups that are marketplaces or horizontal players have chosen to gobble up niche operators. One that made big news last month was online classifieds portal Quikr acquiring housing CommonFloor.

In the home services segment, Housejoy and UrbanClap have emerged as major names. While UrbanClap snapped up US$25 million in a series B round in November last year, Housejoy raised US$22 million in December.

Housejoy has expanded fast to at least 12 cities and is looking to grow more.

But what’s in the deal for MyWash? The company is looking to scale to 10,000 completed jobs per day over the next year in the laundry space.

“This is the best opportunity for the team to scale our vision of being the number one laundry player in the country,” says Raghu Bharat, co-founder at MyWash.

The entire MyWash core team will be joining Housejoy and will operate from its office.

Quality will be key