Online service in the Middle East is starting.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “ePanda goes to the Middle East (ID: ePandaMENA).
The Dubai Laundry Company Washmen recently received $6.2 million in Series B financing.
Washmen was founded in 2015 by Rami Shaar and Jad Halaoui. At first, Washmen’s development was mainly based on the light asset model, working with logistics companies and laundromats.
Today, Washmen has its own supply chain and has a 30,000 square foot laundry and dry cleaning facility that can clean 25,000 garments per day during peak hours.
Users can use the Washmen app to place an online laundry service to set the door-to-door reception time and clothing return time. Laundry delivery time is generally 48 hours, but users can also choose to pay a 50% surcharge to request the next day delivery.
Up to $30 billion in the Middle East Home Economics Market
The back of Washmen reflects the domestic service market to be developed in the Middle East.
In the case of the six Gulf States, the size of the domestic service market in the region is about $20 to $30 billion a year. The market for laundry alone is about $3 billion, with an annual growth rate of 9%, and will grow substantially over the next five years.
However, less than 1% of housekeeping services are booked online.
Compared with traditional offline housekeeping services, Internet Home Service Services can provide users with a variety of convenient home service booking options, such as laundry, cleaning, moving, maintenance, and more.
With the improvement of people’s living standards in the Gulf region and the development of Internet technology, online housekeeping service booking can meet the needs of the market.
Some international giants have also taken this opportunity to work with domestic service companies to develop new business channels and to enhance the user experience. For example, home retail giant IKEA acquired the housekeeping service errand platform TaskRabbit, the US home building materials retailer Home Depot investment home improvement platform Homee.
In the Middle East, there are also many domestic service Internet companies like Washmen, which have attracted the attention of many investors.
ServiceMarket
ServiceMarket based in DubaiIt is a domestic company that provides moving and handling services and received $4 million in the latest round of financing.
It is worth noting that the Russian investor AddVenture not only invested in the Washmen mentioned above, but also invested in ServiceMarket.
The ServiceMarket, which was established in 2013, initially only provided relocation services for Dubai residents. Later, ServiceMarket expanded its business and market, and now provides 35 households such as household cleaning, handyman, horticulture, pest control, and family and auto insurance to residents of eight cities in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. service.
Only last year, 150,000 users booked home services online through ServiceMarket, and ServiceMarket created more than $30 million in sales for partners.
Matic
Matic is an abbreviation for “khadamatic” (“Your Service”), a start-up company that provides online cleaning services for home cleaning services with an order of over 150,000 per month.
Users can order cleaning services on the Matic platform. Matic will match the cleaning of the appropriate cleaners according to the user’s location and specific needs.
But Matic does not have its own cleaners and drivers, which operate primarily through cooperation with third-party housekeeping providers. This online business model, which relies on online bookings, is similar to Careem, Uber, and Airbnb, greatly reducing operating costs.
Matic, established in 2016, has now received over $3 million in financing. Its initial business scope is only in Dubai and has now expanded to 12 cities in three markets: UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Lebanon.
Justmop
The same cleaning service is also provided by Justmop, a Dubai housekeeping service company founded in 2014.
The difference is that Justmop values the Kuwaiti market.
Comparing the size of the house, Kuwait’s houses are generally larger than the UAE. In Kuwait, the price of Justmop starts from KWD 2 per hour (approximately USD 6.6 per hour), with a 5-hour cleaning package and a 10-hour cleaning package.
In addition, the large number of young people in Kuwait, high disposable income, and low entry thresholds for Internet companies have also become the reason why Justmop focuses on the development of the Kuwaiti market.
JustClean
In addition to Justmop, and JustClean, a Kuwaiti laundry company, you can also book laundry services online. JustClean founder Nouri and Athbi Al-Enezi
JustClean, which was founded in 2016, seems to be more popular with investors. Currently, JustClean has received $12.9 million in investment from Kuwaiti venture capital fund Faith Capital Holding. The latest investment was in February 2019 with an investment of $8 million.
With funding support, JustClean’s expansion is getting faster and faster. Currently, the market for JustClean has expanded to the UAE, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia. By the end of 2019, JustClean plans to launch its services in Jeddah and Riyadh.
It is worth noting that since entering the UAE market in 2018, JustClean has worked with more than 100 laundry service providers. With a deadline of 2020, JustClean also plans to sign a cooperation agreement with at least 10 laundries every month.
编 | 云晞@出海
Figure | Unsplash
