A couple of days ago, a friend and I had been discussing what else hyper/local play could do to expand business and create differentiators, and I’d mentioned to him that from empirical evidence of comments from people and on our apartment mailing list, ironing services inside apartment complexes were a major point.
The next morning, went downstairs to drop the kids to the school bus, and what do I see ?
On digging just a little, here’s what I found – introducing the Village Laundry Service funded by Innosight Ventures, and promotes individual entrepreneurs to run their rigs.
Lesson for the day: Its not just the idea!
You have a great idea you want to keep safe ? That might be redundant 
One’s heard often that 10 other people have exactly the same idea at the same time as you have it (or even earlier), and it boils down to execution, but it was still a very wow moment to come across a real world example of one such.There are opportunities galore. We often do not explore enough, or fail to understand the real pain points of the consumers we’re trying to address. It takes ears on the ground, and a continuous interpretation of what it all means, to identify what might serve, delight the consumer and differentiate the service.
Even in the above context, perhaps there’s a potential for someone to provide infrastructure with multiple interfaces, basic CRM handling, billing solutions, etc, that could lend a professional edge to such services ? Of course, the work just starts here. The opportunity needs to be evaluated, the roadmap for serving the market needs to be readied, and most importantly, the idea needs to get out of the door a.s.a.p! Borrowing from a cliched quote, execution is not the most important thing, its (almost) everything!
[ A lot of the above will be discussed at the Product Strategy Workshop on Saturday. A few seats are left, so do get in touch with ashish at pluggd.in or sameer.shisodia at slicedbread.in ]
“Execution is the key” is such a simple and crisp message, probably we start hearing this from very early days in life but it takes time [probably one startup/bootstrapping experience] for first time/wannabe entrepreneurs believe that “Idea is Nothing-Execution is What Matters?” to get out of Idea Phobia.
Ashish – I think pluggd.in needs more posts on how get out of Idea Phobia and focus on execution – I’m sure it helps lot of wannabe/firsttime entrepreneurs.
Very true. Ashish, I think an Unpluggd session on this itself would be quite cool – with real life examples from people’s experiences to highlight the gains/losses that arose from execution speed or the lack of the same.
I have been following pluggd for sometime now and this is one more in the list of nice articles. Believe it or not, I have been thinking about the same issue. I find that near our house, there is not a “safe” ironing place. Either the guy loses the clothes or the delivery dates are never set. I hope this comes in near my house too. And couldnt agree more with the execution – any idea which gets others saying I thought about these too should be some kind of validation. Keep up the good work Ashish
Thanks Guru for your kind words.
The article is written not by me, but Sameer
Ashish, I think Guru was referring to the overall direction Pluggd has been taking
Guru, thanks! Yeah, its amazing how many ideas stay at that level just because inertia takes over. And truly, the best way is to discuss them freely – in any case the ones who take an idea forward deserve them anyhow. Being guarded only harms the ideas since you might find someone to help you execute on them quicker, better!
I like the idea but I am not sure whether it is scalable. Will they stay competitive. How will they compete with the local washerman who comes and picks up clothes for ironing from home?
What kind of margins will they have? Do they plan to iron clothes at the place where they get it or do they have a central location? If it is at the same place then where are the economies of scale? If they are planning to get it to a central location then they would need to get bigger to offset the transportation costs.
Idea is good but as you mentioned execution will be key.
V good questions. Here’s a few thoughts:
a) Scalable is not critical to each business. In any case, each is an entrepreneur run kiosk, so doable!
b) The pain point was created precisely because the existing vendors (local washermen, ironing guys) were unable to provide a decent, reliable, consistent level of service. Fixing that will be key.
c) Check the design out. The washing, ironing etc all happens there.
The MOST important thing : since they’ve gone ahead and started executing on this, they’re already better placed to answer these questions than you, me, tom, dick or still-thinking-and-wondering-about-the-idea-harry. Too often we get paralyzed by our own doubts, worries and not being able to have 100% clarity or visibility.
Great Pick, Guys!!
This is a brillaintly thought out idea, and there is a great team in place executing this. Ive been associated with Chamak for some months, so though I’m not a Tom, Dick or Harry, I’ll attempt to be the Jane to provide some more (informative?) fodder to the discussion:)
Fristly, to answer the questions, its a completely scalable solution – they have tie-ups with all the major supermarkets (cant make out if this one is Fresh@ or Smart)…and many more to come. The supermarkets offer high footfalls, security and many more benefits to the entrepreneurs…Its also a very convenient place for customers to drop off thier laundry.
The concept is that of a neighbourhood laundry service, that provides excellent quality and service (24 hrs delivery of clothes that are washed, dried and ironed). There is no central location – each entrepreneur manages his/ her (yes, we have women-microentreprenerus too!!) location and the clientelle that comes in that location through the kiosk.
You got it right – Cracking the customer pain point is key. Chamak, in the past 6 months has done a great job with this – why dont you also try them out?
The model is created as a social venture, to bring business opportunitites like this one to existing dhobis, and other BoP entrepreneurs. They have the opportunity, and access to clients they otherwise would not have…. So, we are co-opting the local dhobi community to a great extent.
It is a disruptive business (read more at http://www.innosightventures.com), and one of the great things about Innosight’s appraoch is not to conceptualise too much – get out there, execute and modify as the customer demands!!
@Neeru Thanks – its great to have the views of someone who’s seen something of this sort on the inside. Helps understand the execution way better.
@Neeru – Its always nice to see someone associated with the product respond.
I am just trying to understand the business model. As far as I understand its like franchiser / franchisee model. Chamak provides a brand name and probably a location though their tie up with supermarkets. In return I guess the franchisee / entrepreneur pays a %age of their sales to Chamak. What I am trying to understand is this %age passed on to customers thus making service relatively more costly or is borne by the franchisee.
Best of luck to you guys.
Thats right, It is a basic franchise model. Difference here is its a “micro-franchise”. The franchisor (Chamak) does take a fee for marketing, branding, location, training, sop, etc. Its not breakneck – and does not take the price to the consumer up. By the way, Rs 40 per KG is a very competitive price for the quality of service that is delivered.
Because its a social business, the franchisor also brings in other advantages like access to loans, and business assistance during the first 6 months…..
“Execution is the key”, I agree but quality of idea is also very important.
I have seen many “me-too” startups, well executed but nobody is there to buy their service.
Further, if every time you chant execution ,execution, then you will loose innovation and boldness to do something very challenging.
I still believe, idea does carry weight,and execution is equally important.
There’s a simple one : if you try you might fail, but if you don’t you surely will!
How does it relate with what I have said..??
The points you made are actually orthogonal. Innovation/boldness and execution are not at odds in any manner. You brought up the point about ideas failing – and they can, for one of a zillion reasons – but a lot of those will surface only when the idea is taken through its paces. Many a idea is stillborn, and dying for want of execution is probably worse than dying because you could not get everything right. The latter ensures you learn early, and have a shot at course correction.
@Bhishm, I believe Innovaiton is a seamless combination of creativity and execution. Not just creativity when you think of the idea, but also creative ways to solve issues and respond to new insights while you are executing – Its the ability to think out of the box all the time – and create value out of it. Otherwise, its just an idea – not Innovation.
Hey – I am heading this startup, and Neeru mentioned this blog and so decided to jump in. Great discussion on the concept, and as you guys are pointing out the key is to get the execution right everyday to ensure that the customer satisfaction is maitained.
The concept relies on removing some of the consumer frustration about the dhobis especially the fact that the quality of washing water, where the clothes get washed (you have to see some of the ghats to realize the hygiene issues) and also the delivery time – so we made this concept by ensuring we have a washing machine, drying and ironing right at the location so as to build customer confidence of quality of wash and on top to ensure timely delivery – we’ve made a promise of 24-48hrs delivery.
We are in very early stage right now – with 15 locations in Bangalore, but I’m happy to see that there are a lot of customers who are seeing the value of the concept.
In a retail venture, the execution is essentially the front-end operator and so we want to ensure that they get the adequate support in training, processes etc to be able to deliver on our promise.
@ akshay
dont the dhobis have fixed areas for them.. i mean the iron waalas have that sort of area division, and u cant iron the clothes of other society… so didnt they create any prob when u entered?
I had exactly similar problem last month with my Kindle, after using it for 6 months. I had used international shipping to get the Kindle shipped to Chennai. We just had to call the customer care and they shipped a fresh, new Kindle which was at my door step in 3 days. I am talking about international shipping here. They didn’t charge us for the new Kindle!
I am great fan of Amazon and when I was in Seattle I had used the e-retailer website for buying everything from book to fresh veggies (Amazon Fresh)!
Believe me when I first saw Infibeam’s website I didn’t like them for just one reason, that they didn’t even bother to change the UI. It aped Amazon in every possible way and I don’t have respect for copy cats!
Its up and running…
http://www.dealmandi.com