D-Laundry Secures Seed Funding, Preparing for Expansion

Begin with the objective to accelerate business growth, online laundry service D-Laundry (PT Drop Global Tech) has just finalized its seed round. The value was not further detailed along with the investors involved. Ridhwan Basalamah, Co-Founder & CEO of Drop Global Tech, told DailySocial that there is an institution and an angel investor involved.

"Our future plan with this fresh fund is to expand D-Laundry products from Greater Jakarta to the national level. At the same time, we have also moved to Tebet, South Jakarta, from our previous office located in Depok," Ridhwan said.

With various expansion plans being prepared, D-Laundry expects to further assist laundry business owners to go-online and together move forward to improve service standards to the community.

Funding obtained from investors will be used to develop D-Laundry features on the application. One of those is the D-Laundry Store, a website-based platform that provides various equipment and professional laundry business packages.

"Our purpose with the D-Laundry Store is to simplify the laundry equipment chain to make it easier for new entrepreneurs. Through the D-Laundry Store they can get equipment, systems, and training to staff," Ridhwan said.

D-Laundry is an on-demand laundry application that combines the needs of people with business owners, therefore, they can access other's services online. From 2016 until now, D-Laundry has partnered with hundreds of laundry entrepreneurs and thousands of users spread across Jabodetabek.

In addition, there are several other local startups that also venture into the same service. One of them is Smartlink, a service that helps laundry entrepreneurs digitize business governance. Currently, it is used by around 4 thousand outlets in Java and Bali. Then there is also KliknKlin, they recently integrated services in the Bukalapak application to get bigger potential users.

Pandemic and business growth

Even though the laundry business is one of the sectors most significantly affected by the pandemic, D-Laundry claims to be able to grow its business. In order to help the partners run their business, they have performed various activities such as training and community development. Among other things, by holding an online seminar event to discuss financial management and funding for a laundry business in facing a pandemic.

During the pandemic, the company also ensures that all partners implement procedures to always clean rooms and laundry facilities with disinfectants, use standardized chemical materials and liquids, ensure worker health, provide handwashing facilities and masks, and implement contactless delivery.

"The laundry industry has indeed been affected by Covid-19. Not a few laundry entrepreneurs have had to go down for losing their customers and purchasing power of the public to use laundry services. However, we are very grateful, especially for D-Laundry partners who are still fighting hard and trusting us," Ridhwan said.

– Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian