On-demand laundry service provider Ahlijasa Indonesia announced on Tuesday that it has secured an undisclosed seed funding, in addition to the release of its iOS app.
Existing investors Fenox VC and 500 Startups, alongside with city-based venture capital firm Indogen Capital were among the participants who have joined the round.
The new capital will be used to improve product offerings and build a larger team, especially on the technology side. It will also be used to focus on the greater Jakarta area, before scaling to other cities.
“We want to improve our product offerings and introduce our service to more customers especially in the Greater Jakarta area before we expand our business to other cities,” said Jay Jayawijayaningtiyas, the CEO of Ahlijasa.
When Ahlijasa was launched in September 2015, the startup began by offering a range of on-demand services, namely three which were laundry, AC repair, and home cleaning.
At the end of 2016, the startup stopped AC repair and home cleaning services completely and chose to focus solely on laundry.
The startup partners with premium launderettes in Jakarta, helping them to make better use of spare capacity.
“We position ourselves as partners of traditional laundry shops. Other models focus on competing against them and thus struggle to beat the low pricing. We empower mom and pop laundry shops by standardizing their operation and helping them get online customers,” Jayawijayaningtiyas explained.
Ahlijasa manages this by offering on-demand pickup and delivery services right at the customer’s doorsteps, where customers can put in as many clothes as possible in the standardized laundry bag provided by the firm, for a flat fee of IDR 49,000 (about US$3.68) per bag.
“We strongly believe that Ahlijasa will be an industry leader very soon. They have started with a key industry and will be able to scale to a variety of different industries with this funding,” said Anis Uzzman, the CEO of Fenox VC.
Previously, Fenox VC has also invested in Ahlijasa in an earlier round as part of its GnB accelerator program back in 2016. Since graduating from the program, Ahlijasa claimed that it has tripled its active user base, and made it services are available in Jabodetabek.
Customers can also now book its laundry services through its newly introduced web and mobile apps which are available on both iOS and Android.
Last August, Ahlijasa won the Startup World Cup Indonesia, the regional finale of the Startup World Cup event organized by Fenox VC and Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy
Currently, Ahlijasa competes with services like Seekmi and KlinKlin, both of which offer laundry services in Indonesia.
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