Ideal and Laundry Efficiency announce collaboration

Retail Entrepreneur Sells Its Business to Tata (India) to Focus on Laundry Startup

Abhinay Choudhari, the cofounder of India’s online retail platform BigBasket has reportedly exited the company to focus on a startup in the laundry segment. According to Business Stanadard and INC24, Choudhari cofounded BigBasket in 2011 and he is exiting the company after Tata Digital Limited, a 100% subsidiary of Tata Sons Private Limited, acquired a majority stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies Private Limited (BigBasket) in May.

Following the deal, Choudhari decided he won’t continue to be part of the management team. Instead, he has entered the online laundry segment in the form of a low-burn pilot for the past five years, setting up the largest laundry facility in India with the capacity to process 45,000 garments per day. The startup is working on an asset-heavy model where it controls the entire process end-to-end, which he stated will help reign in the unit economics and enables quick turnaround time of 24 hours. It is building a hub-and-spoke model of laundry services for the 30 cities, with 15-20 hubs in each city, backed by two to four state-of-the-art service centres. The four centers are expected to employ 800-1,000 people per city, while each hub will have 100-125 employees. The startup is expected to begin operations from Bengaluru with a team of 300 people.