Waking up in the morning, getting ready for work, grabbing a quick bite and dashing out that’s a typical day for most people. And before you know it, the long day has already come to an end.
If only someone could take care of the piles of laundry stacking up in one’s room, especially if they’re living alone (apart from other things, of course!)
That’s exactly what prompted friends and flatmates Ankit Agarwal and Himanshu Gupta to brainstorm and come up with ‘Flashdoor’, an app that offers the convenience of laundry services to all those needy souls.
While Himanshu had extensively worked on mobile technology at Kiwi (a mobile game developer), Ankit had managed various aspects of operations at Flipkart.
As they decided to quit and start something of their own, they explored various business ideas where they could use their experience. They thought of bringing convenience and reliability to the home services industry and decided to start with laundry services as they felt it’s a never ending story for those who need it.
“We used to struggle every week to find a reliable vendor to take care of our laundry needs in Bengaluru. A few were available but nobody promised quick delivery and timely pick-up from our doorstep. Hence, we decided to solve the problem ourselves,” says Ankit.
“We launched the app in September this year and have received a great response from young professionals who are pressed for time and want to outsource their laundry to a quality service provider,” he adds.
The ‘Flashdoor’ app is available for download on Google playstore. It offers a ‘wash and iron’ service as of now but the team plans to convert this into a full service laundry app by the end of the year with ‘dry cleaning’, ‘iron only’ and other services being added to the portfolio.
The app offers an instant pick-up option ‘Pickup Now’ for pickups within the next hour and a ‘Pick Later’ option for scheduling pickups for a later slot.
Dirties picked up are cleaned and delivered back to the door step within 72 hours, shares Ankit. It also supports a wallet, through which the bill is auto deducted upon completion of the order.
The service is priced at Rs 79 per kg for wash & iron including free pickup and drop. Flashdoor covers 60 plus pincodes in the City.
“The response so far has been great with the app already nearing a thousand downloads within the City. We even plan to launch an iOS version of the app very soon. We would diversify into more categories like beauty, appliance repair, home cleaning and maintenance as well,” adds Ankit.
