Laundry venture Wassup is acquiring its former rival, Mumbai-based Doormint, in an equity swap transaction.
Doormint investors Kalaari Capital and Helion Ventures will hold equity in Wassup Laundry. Wassup is only acquiring the tech and infrastructure assets of Doormint and the team will not join the startup post acquisition.
Durga Das, Founder and MD, Wassup, said,
“Wassup has a solid business model that is capable of scaling to be the market leader in this space. We thank all the stakeholders including our investors, employees, consumers, and vendors for supporting us in this journey. We are happy to welcome Kalaari and Helion as part of our team, and believe that they can add a lot of value in our journey to be the market leader.”
Rajesh Raju, MD of Kalaari Capital, said,
“We believe in consumer and retail businesses that build sustainable, long term value. We have seen the online laundry space go through rough times but believe that Wassup has a unique hybrid model with strong unit economics and a brand of national presence that can be leveraged to create a leading laundry brand in India.”
Founded in 2011 by Balachandar R and Durga Das, Wassup is an on-demand service provider which currently offers services like laundry, dry cleaning, shoes, and bag refurbishments at the user’s doorstep.
Currently operational in seven cities – Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Cochin.
The firm also has strong B2B clients such as Taj Hotels, Oberoi, JW Marriott, among others.
Doormint had shut its operations in September 2016.