Fly Without Wings

Noticed a very professional looking newspaper insert this morning about the launch of a new laundry service in the neighborhood.

The tag line - “Cleaned, Pressed, Delivered” - looked cool and snug with a dandy logo. Then there was a prominently displayed URL, mention of multiple office locations in the city - as well as across the country.

Intrigued, I spent a few moments reading the body copy and liked what I saw - here’s the gist of what I found:

What is the service? - At home laundry service

Who is it for? - Upmarket neighbourhoods pressed for time (how do I know? - well I live in one and am generally pressed for time!)

What is the distribution channel? - At home pickup & drop

How’s the service priced? - INR 40 per kilogram of clothes (which works out to just over 1.5 dollars for each pound)

How is it being promoted? - No expensive ads, targeted messaging in select neighborhoods

So what’s different about this given the tons of ways one could do laundry in India?

Well, 3 things:

1. Scale Play - The service seems to be aggregating demand across the basic (currently served by road side shops/ hawkers) as well as advanced laundry requirements (local dry-cleaning chains/ Mom & Pop stores do it right now)

2. Pricing - Unique per unit of weight based pricing (now this one would have required lot of homework)

3. Dramatic Value - For an overworked family they bring tremendous convenience: dry-cleaned quality at your door step

I believe that in an emerging market like India where many of us are now demanding (or rather waiting for) value they should do just fine - as long as they execute right.

And yes, I’m going to check them out!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 3:15 am and is filed under Emerging Markets, India, Marketing, Start-ups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.