It’s not often that we see rank freshers jumping into capital-intensive ventures. And offering premium dry-cleaning services is not a mom-and-pop story, anyway. There is very little room for trial and error. Yet, you cannot get all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle when you start up. Such a feat has been accomplished by Mumbai-based Radha Kapoor, a NID student who is passionate about doing things out of the box. She saw an opportunity and brought the French dry-cleaning services Pressto to India. But she hasn’t stopped at that. She is building a design studio that focuses on wallscaping. DARE spoke to Radha and Esther Lennaerts, Executive Chairman, Pressto.
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| Esther Lennaerts and Radha Kapoor |
How did you get into this venture?
Radha: Dry cleaning is a basic need. With Indian conditions being the way they are, clothes get extremely dirty in a very short span of time. There was a real need for a place where you could get your clothes cleaned with quality.
India has a rich heritage of beautiful and colorful garments and textiles, and with global brands coming to India, there was always an issue of finding a good dry cleaner.
Did you find the need to partner with some local talent or business who had done this before? How did you jump into it on your own?
Radha: No. As our concept is very different from the local dry cleaners there was no real competition from them. But in order to cater to the Indian market we learned about cleaning Indian garments. We went through an extensive training program in Spain and also focused on training our staff thoroughly. Since we began operations in India we have cleaned over 2 million garments.
Did Pressto customize their machinery to handle Indian garments?
Radha: Not really, but we have developed a dry-cleaning program for Indian garments. Indian garments are locally dyed with a full range of embellishments. If you put these garments in a normal dry-clean cycle, some of the embellishment doesn’t stay in it. Pressto developed a professional program for these kinds of garments and tested it for one year in our first store in Juhu. Our program was a huge success and we are proud of the number of garments we have cleaned since.
Typically, how much time do you take to deliver a garment?
Esther: We can deliver a garment in approximately two hours, at an express charge. Normally, depending on our workload, we take two days, or maximum three.
Many of the upmarket dry-cleaning services also deliver within two days. What is your USP?
Esther: We offer the best quality you can get in India. Our USP is that we have a dry-cleaning machine and highly trained people in our store. Our store manager is fully responsible for the cleaning and customer deliveries. Our customers get a full understanding of what is going to be done to their garment, and so the customer feels totally at ease with our service.
Most dry-cleaning services have huge caging machines where millions of garments get cleaned together. Pressto machines are only 16 kg and are much more hygienic in their cleaning as a lesser quantity of clothes are cleaned together. What is also unique to Pressto is that we clean our cleaning solvent after each cycle. This is an expensive method, but quality is very important to us and we don’t believe in shortcuts.
What was your strategy in convincing the customers to come to you rather than go to their friendly neighborhood dry cleaner?
Radha: Our friendliness is what made people come to us.
How did you get your first set of clients?
Esther: When we opened our first store in Juhu, most people just walked in looking for a quality service. In the last three years, we have had 20,000 customers and have cleaned over 2 million garments. Our entire customer base has been through word of mouth, and today we have 20,000 happy customers.
What is the vision behind the DoIt creation?
Radha: The DoIt creation is basically a holding company which has invested in Pressto and another venture called Brand Canvas. The vision is to invest in creative and premium business ventures and make them grow. With Pressto, we are aiming to grow to about hundred stores by 2015.
You are also planning to set up a creative studio. Is that going to be a different business or is it part of Brand Canvas?
Radha: It is actually a part of Brand Canvas with a focus on wallscaping. Our vision is to do customized wall art for branding.
Coming back to Pressto, how easy was it to identify different locations and space?
Radha: Part of our marketing strategy was to be in an area where you have good signage and visibility. Most of our locations are on urban high streets where we have good visibility. The biggest challenge in cities is to get affordable real estate where you have all the facilities or can build all of the facilities that are technically needed. To overcome certain technical challenges like water shortage on premises, the Pressto India technical team has developed internal water circuits that cool the water and reuses it again. With this kind of specialized expertise, we have been able to work in our smallest store, which is only 560 square feet.
How has the entire project been funded?
Radha: The investment for the project has come from DoIt Creations and ELYM.
In broad terms, can you give me a sense of your growth?
Radha: The retail sector in India has gone through major cycles and only the strong businesses who knew what they were doing have survived. Our biggest achievement in this scenario has been that we turned around a profit within the first year at the store level. Keeping a careful eye on your profit and loss is an extremely important business rule that we have followed.
Is each unit responsible for its own quality control or is there a quality control unit?
Esther: Quality control happens at various stages. Our operations are broken into stations, and at each station there are quality checks. The first stage is where the garment is inspected for any alteration, following which it goes to stain removal where each stain is removed twice. Moving on, it goes to pressing and then packing. At each station, the person who handles the garment checks the quality of the previous station before sending it forward.
How did Presto decide on coming to India?
Radha: India has been fairly popular in the West, and Spain was definitely eager to come to India. Pressto was successful in getting a 50 year franchise in India, which made a lot of business sense as the younger, upwardly mobile Indian generation will come of age in the next decade and would form our major customer base.
Do you have exclusive rights for India?
Radha: Yes, we have exclusive rights for the India zone.
Any plans of going to new cities?
Radha: As of now, we have Delhi and Mumbai. As I said earlier, it is very important to keep profit and loss in mind before expanding. When you go into a new area you need to set up the infrastructure and the people, and all this affects the profit/loss balance.
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