Assignment 1 Deadline: 04/03/2020 @ 23:59 Course Name: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Instructions: · : Students must mention question number clearly in their answer. · Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions. · All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism). · Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines · Support your submission with further scientific references. · Minimum words are 550 Download the article, read it carefully and answer the following questions in your own words: Assignment Questions: 1. Critically analyze the Problems faced by the young entrepreneurs and strategies to overcome those problems. 2. Discuss the challenges of PKC as an aggregator business and the scope of what PKC can do in the future to strengthen its position. 3. Discuss the various marketing management issues such as segmenting, targeting and positioning? Assignment 1 Dead line: 0 4 / 03 /20 20 @ 23:59 Course Name: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Instructions : · : Students must mention question number clearly in their answer. · Avoid plagiarism , the work should be in your own words , copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions. · All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double - spaced) font . No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism). · Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines · Support your submission with further scientific references . · M inimum words are 550 Download the article, read it carefully and answer the follow ing questions in your own words: Assignment Questions: 1. Critically analyze the Problems faced by the young entrepreneurs and strategies to overcome those problems. 2. Discuss the challenges of PKC as an aggregator business and the scope of what PKC can do in the future to strengthen its position. 3. Discuss the various marketing management issues such as segmenting, targeting and positioning ? Assignment 1 Deadline: 04/03/2020 @ 23:59 Course Name: Entrepreneurship and Small Business Instructions:  : Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.  Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.  All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double- spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).  Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines  Support your submission with f.

1. Assignment 1
Deadline: 04/03/2020 @ 23:59
Course Name: Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Instructions:
· : Students must mention question number clearly in their
answer.
· Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words,
copying from students or other resources without proper
referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
· All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12,
double-spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be
accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
· Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards
and APA style guidelines
· Support your submission with further scientific references.
· Minimum words are 550
Download the article, read it carefully and answer the following
questions in your own words:
Assignment Questions:
1. Critically analyze the Problems faced by the young
entrepreneurs and strategies to overcome those problems.
2. Discuss the challenges of PKC as an aggregator business and
the scope of what PKC can do in the future to strengthen its
position.
3. Discuss the various marketing management issues such as
segmenting, targeting and positioning?

2. Assignment 1
Dead
line: 0
4
/
03
/20
20
@ 23:59
Course Name:
Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Instructions
:
·
:
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
·
Avoid plagiarism
, the work should be in
your own words
, copying from
students or
other resources without proper referencing

3. will result in
ZERO
marks. No exceptions.
·
All answered must be typed using
Times New Roman (size 12, double
-
spaced)
font
. No pictures
containing text will be accepted and will be
considered plagiarism).
·
Use Saudi
Electronic University
academic writing standards and APA style
guidelines
·
Support your submission with further scientific references
.
·
M
inimum
words

4. are
550
Download the article, read it carefully and answer the follow
ing questions in your
own words:
Assignment Questions:
1.
Critically analyze the Problems faced by the young
entrepreneurs and strategies to
overcome those problems.
2.
Discuss the
challenges of PKC as an aggregator
business and the scope of what PKC
can do in the future to strengthen its position.
3.
Discuss the various marketing management issues such as
segmenting, targeting and
positioning
?

5. Assignment 1
Deadline: 04/03/2020 @ 23:59
Course Name: Entrepreneurship and Small Business
Instructions:
nts must mention question number clearly in their
answer.
copying from
students or other resources without proper referencing will
result in ZERO
marks. No exceptions.
ped using Times New Roman (size
12, double-
spaced) font. No pictures containing text will be accepted and
will be
considered plagiarism).
and APA style
guidelines
with further scientific references.
Download the article, read it carefully and answer the following
questions in your
own words:
Assignment Questions:
1. Critically analyze the Problems faced by the young
entrepreneurs and strategies to
overcome those problems.
2. Discuss the challenges of PKC as an aggregator business and

6. the scope of what PKC
can do in the future to strengthen its position.
3. Discuss the various marketing management issues such as
segmenting, targeting and
positioning?
Introduction
Premanth Kundurthi and Chaitanya Ammeneni at a young age of
25 years were already well-entrenched into their laundry
business since the past two years. In their business circle,
everyone fondly referred to them as PK (Premnanth Kundurthi)
and Chaitanya (Chaitanya Ammeneni), and their business
venture named PKC Laundries was a take-off on their initials
but to their customers it stood for Perfect Klinic for Clothes.
It was in the year 2014 that PKC took shape as a brainchild of
PK and Chaitanya, friends in college pursuing their MBA. For
this idea, they had won the Young Entrepreneurs award in a
Business Idea Competition hosted by a famous national level
Business School in India.
Although the business of providing laundry services was not
new, yet the entrepreneurs had created a unique business model
based on the emerging concept of an aggregator start-up with
reliance on the IT technology platform. In the year 2015, they
converted their idea into a reality:
Washing clothes is one of the hectic tasks for everyone. We
wanted to start a technology driven laundry service which
would be just be a click away for everyone. We want to provide
quality, cost effective quick and thrilling laundry services to all
our customers, say the founders of PKC Laundries.
Now in the year 2017, the promoters were concerned about their
business. There were challenges involving the day-to-day
operational problems of the business. They needed to come up
with solutions regarding strengthening of their supply chain and
creating and implementing robust business processes to ensure

7. reliability of service and quality. The promoters had also to
strategize and have a clear vision regarding the future of their
business. They needed to examine ways to increase their market
share and operating margin. They also needed to evaluate the
options of increasing capital investment for backward
integration of operations to reduce costs versus market
expansion through the franchise route.
Types and size of the laundry market in India
Types of laundry services
The business of washing clothes or laundering is as old as
modern civilization where people with less time or interest in
this mundane chore outsource it to a service provider. In India,
the laundry market exists on four different levels and is
different from the Laundromat concept of the West but similar
in nature to the Dry Cleaning services. Traditionally, most of
the households in India still wash and iron their clothes at
home. Many a time, a housemaid is engaged to do the washing
and sometimes even ironing. For a little more expenditure, a
“dhobi” (Hindi word for a washer-man) can pick up clothes
from home for washing and ironing. The Dhobi provides this
service in the unorganized sector as an individual, and his
business is limited to the particular locality he serves. His
quality of ironing is better than that at home due to the heavier
ironing machine used. At the third level are the laundry shops.
The customers have to drop off their clothes for washing and
ironing and pick them up later. This service is available mainly
in the metropolitan areas in very few localities and is costlier
than a dhobi but still preferred by many due to the trust in a
business establishment. At the top end of the spectrum are the
dry cleaning shops which use petrol wash and chemical wash to
dry clean the clothes and then steam iron them. This is a
premium priced service and preferred only for certain types of
clothes like special occasion or party wear or special fabrics
like silks and woolens. These traditional laundry business
formats are referred to as “off-line business” to distinguish
them from the web based businesses which are called on-line

8. laundry services (Exhibit 1).
Market potential
As laundry is a necessary chore for every household, it is one of
the markets which is least affected by economic ups and downs.
Even during a recessionary trend people could hesitate to buy
clothes but would not want to avoid spending money to keep
their existing clothing neat and tidy. Hence, the market for
laundry in India has always been growing, and according to
euro Monitor International Report, 2015, it has been estimated
at Rs 220,000 crore (Rs 2,200bn). The laundry industry which is
fragmented has around 767,000 establishments, 98 per cent of
which are micro-level Laundries with fewer than ten workers
(Choudhury, 2015).
Praveen Sinha, founder, Jabong, an e-commerce portal and an
investor in an on-line laundry service named Wassup India, is of
the opinion that 2 to 3 per cent of the entire laundry market is
organized, and out of this, 25 per cent of the business will be
online as a large number of middle class families are now
preferring at-your-doorstep laundry services, which are of good
quality and hygienic (Chodhury, 2015). As such the demand for
organized laundry is on the rise and organized players are
giving the neighbourhood dhobis a run for their money. The
increasing demand for laundry services has also paved the way
for global players to enter the Indian market, thus creating a
scope for the Indian laundry market to grow bigger and become
more quality conscious (Chakravorthy, 2009). The laundry
business model is changing due to wide usage of smart phones
and easy availability of IT-enabled platforms resulting in an
increase in number of online startups. “Household and personal
services, including laundry, lack professionalism and
accountability in India”, says Nishanti Tripathi founder
Dhobilite, another online laundry service. He opines that “doing
laundry is a necessity and a time consuming chore, hence
providing laundry services to people who value convenience and
quality will work”. Many youngsters are all set to disrupt the
laundry market with their startups of online services and are

9. bringing in the necessary professionalism to the laundry market.
As such, the requirement for on demand services is gaining
impetus across various cities of India, and Hyderabad city is no
exception to it. Online services are considered to be the future
to deliver goods and services to the customers (Tiwari, 2016).
Several parameters that are driving entrepreneurs to go for
online laundry services are as follows:
· Owing to fast and wide spread information technology in
India, consumer-oriented services have been accelerated.
· Be it grocery, food, doctor services or household services,
there is a rise in on-demand services owing to fast changing
demographics of customers.
· Difficulty in getting specialized wash care, unavailability of
maids has made the customer’s look for alternative services.
· Unavailability of one stop solution for all laundry needs is
driving customers to go for online services.
Online laundry services sometimes referred to as on-demand
startups are slowly picking up in India. They work on the
principle of aggregation, i.e. they hire delivery professionals
and partner with local dhobis to do the laundry. The benefits of
on-demand laundry include washed and dry-cleaned clothes
being delivered right at the door step of the customer. Vendors
too gain since their additional costs and time for pickup and
delivery is significantly reduced.
The entrepreneurs
PK and Chaitanya although good friends since five years are
poles apart in their personalities and in their approach to
business but compliment each other’s strength. Chaitanya, is the
workaholic strategist and visionary, who appears reserved but is
always available for all back-end support. In contrast, PK is a
gregarious chatter box. His out-going friendly manner endears
him to a lot of people thus he handles the people part of the
business by taking care of the entire business development.
However, what had initially drawn the two together was their
similar background. Both were Mechanical Engineers from
middle class families with their fathers in Government Service,

10. which meant limited financial support and knowledge in the
running of a business. Both loved technology and would spend
hours discussing applying information technology to business
situations.
About the company
The founders claim that PKC Laundries is a first of its kind in
Hyderabad, India. PKC is a technology-driven laundry service
that provides a platform for the vendors and customers. The
founders say that they have a solution for all clothing related
issues. As to how they zeroed in to this business they
commented, “People are always running for three generic
necessities which are Roti (Bread), Kapda (Clothes) and
Makaan (House). There are enough services that cater to food
and housing but the ‘kapda’ sector is a highly untapped sector
and with PKC we wish to change the outlook of people about
the laundry industry” (Das, 2016). PK and Chaitanya feel that
their USP is their uncompromising attitude towards quality.
They vouch for quality being their top priority and promise that
there will not be any more misplaced clothes or colour bleeding
of clothes. The promoters also feel that they are being
philanthropic and socially responsible in running their business.
According to PK, 21.9 per cent of India’s population is living
below the poverty line (BPL), and the average income of a BPL
person is Rs 33 per day. By providing self-employment to their
vendors who are mainly from the BPL segment, they feel they
are able to increase their income to at least Rs 333 per day, thus
uplifting few of the BPL segment.
The PKC Laundries business model
Mission and vision
PK and Chaitanya, while deciding about their business of PKC
Laundries, were driven by a single thought which was to enter a
business in which demand would not wane. The Indian psyche
considers the bare necessities of life as essential and sacrosanct
and Indians strive to take care of their needs of Roti (bread),
Kapada (clothing) and Makaan (shelter) in that order. To enter
any food-related (Roti) business venture was ruled out early-on

11. due to its perishable nature. Clothing appealed to them but
again their strength was not in fashion or clothes designing, so
being Mechanical Engineers they chose to enter the business of
maintenance of clothes.
Their mission was to offer technology-driven laundry service
which would just be a click away for everyone. Thus, they had
created a business without owning or managing back end assets
or operations. After on-boarding customers they would pass on
the clothes for processing as per the customers’ orders to their
different vendors. Their investment was in a website, three
small covered delivery vans and rented rooms. These rooms
were located in three zones within Hyderabad city. The rooms
were part of the back-end operations and provided a place for
the delivery boys to segregate the clothes.
Their vision for PKC Laundries was reflected in the line “You
Care Your Family; We Care YourFabric” which was
prominently displayed on the home page of PKC Laundries
website. Beside this was a welcome message from the founders
PK and Chaitanya “we want to provide quality and cost
effective laundry services to all our customers.”
The services offered by the company include: washing; washing
and ironing; only ironing; dry-cleaning; dyeing, darning, rolling
and polishing. They concentrate on apartments, gated
communities and group houses to scout for their customers, as
finding a laundry service provider is a tedious task in these
areas. The main features that PKC are banking on are affordable
prices; quick and easy access; free pickup and delivery; and 100
per cent quality assurance.
The aggregator business
A start-up is considered as an entrepreneurial venture in the
small and medium enterprise (SME) business segment. The
Government of India is encouraging start-ups and under its
“Make in India” mission mentions that “Start-up India initiative
is designed to foster innovation, create jobs and facilitate
investment. Government is committed to make this initiative a
scalable reality and to provide an environment for our start-ups

12. to thrive in”. So this is the age of start-ups. Most of the start-
ups are driven by the opportunities presented in the e-commerce
segment based on the IT platform of the convenience of apps on
smart phones and websites on computers and modelled around
aggregating demand by increasing the on-boarding of customers
and being asset light. It meant doing business without owning
the necessary assets for creating the good or service but relying
on third party vendors to meet the customer demand.
Essentially, a start-up aggregator business is seen as one of
merely coordinating various business functions without actually
creating the asset pool to sustain it but relying on other peoples’
assets.
PKC Laundries is built along this aggregator model. Their aim
is to bring vendors and clients on to the same platform.
PKC business process
The startups business model is lean and simple. For the
domestic retail customer, pick-up-and-drop service for clothes
is done in multiple ways to suit the customers’ convenience.
Delivery boys visit the customer at home or the customer drops
the clothes for servicing at designated places inside gated
communities during fixed time slots or at alliance shops and
boutiques. The services offered by PKC can be accessed through
their website, APP, WhatsApp, Facebook page or over phone.
The clothes to be serviced are bagged immediately on receiving
from the customer and given a number as per the
acknowledgement receipt generated or as per the monthly
package membership number. Thereafter, all the bags are
dispatched to the nearest processing hub. At the processing hub,
the bags are opened and individual items of clothing are tagged
with radio frequency identification design codes to ensure no
mix-up during the process of cleaning and processing. In fact,
PKC Laundries has invested a substantial amount in acquiring
and integrating the RFID technology in their operations. Once
tagged the clothes are sent to the relevant vendor as per the
service demanded. After the clothes are back from the vendors,
they are again segregated according to the address of customer

13. and the concerned delivery boys then deliver them at the
designated locations (Exhibit 2).
The back-end:
To provide the necessary back-end support PKC Laundries had
tied up with dhobis (washer men), laundry shops and dry
cleaners within their three zones of operations. To ensure
consistent and superior cleaning, PKC Laundries insisted that
dhobis and the laundry shops use only the detergents and
chemicals that they supplied. Within six months of dealing with
the unorganized sector of Dhobis PKC had to deal with their
lack of commitment to timely deliveries or quality output.
Hence, they had, on an experimental basis, created their own in-
house team of two families to have better control on the
operations. Each team consisted of a husband and wife who
would both work to finish the tasks of the day. They were
brought in from the neighbouring State of Orissa known for its
workmen’s positive attitude to work in the service and
hospitality industry. These two families were provided housing
accommodation in apartments which also served as their
workplace. So PKC was operating both the systems in parallel –
the existing vendor base along with the experimental in-house
labour.
USP of the business model
A laundry business to be set up on a scale of business similar to
PKC Laundries in the organized sector would require heavy
investments in a clothes cleaning factory installed with all the
requisite equipment, machinery, manpower and vehicles for
pick-up and delivery as well as marketing costs associated with
promotional launch and marketing campaign. During an
interview with Chaitanya, he had confided that had they not
taken the aggregator route they would have had to consider a
project investment of more than Rs 5 crores (Rs 50m). As
against this they had managed an equivalent output with an
investment of Rs 10 lakhs (Rs 1m) which was a fraction of the
total investment needed. They had easily managed this small
capital investment out of their own funds without going in for

14. any loans or borrowings.
The team
The operations are handled by a team of 30 employees including
the promoters. PK is the CEO and Chaitanya is the COO and
under them they have a team of two managers designated as
operations manager and marketing manager. The Operations
manager’s team has two operations executives and 21 delivery
boys, whereas the marketing manager has an executive assistant
and two telecallers reporting to him. Chaitanya has the
conviction that “A team is an absolute necessity for a task to be
accomplished. Nothing can be done single handedly and I do not
believe in terms like ‘one man army’”. He firmly believes that
“If we keep motivating them (employees); they will work
wonders for your company”.
Market competition
Presently in Hyderabad city, PKC Laundries has no direct
competitors in the online laundry service. They faced little
competition from Wassup Laundry Service which had its
presence in six other cities as well and Laundry Shine, both of
them were not based on aggregator model. Another firm S-
Bricks was primarily providing handyman services for houses
and laundry service was just another service in their bouquet of
services offered. As such the image of S-Bricks did not affect
the business of PKC Laundries. Another firm which was a start-
up similar to PKC had folded up about nine months back after
trying their hand at the business for nearly 20 months. The main
competition faced by PKC Laundries was from the conventional
off-line service providers in this field where services provided
by dhobis for daily usage clothes were cheaper by almost 50 per
cent (Exhibit 6).
Target market
Hyderabad city has grown into a sprawling 650 square
kilometers area with a population of more than 10 million
people (Kumar, 2016). The Western part of the city is where the
growth had occurred due to the boom in the IT sector. Not only
had it led to the creation of commercial built space for the

15. offices and commercial establishments but it also triggered a
humongous requirement for residential built space to cater to
the housing needs of these young IT sector professionals. This
resulted in ripple effect growth in the real estate sector where
all kind of up market housing was created and the most popular
were the gated community living, multi-tower high rise
apartments and luxury villas. Such real estate developments had
anywhere from 200 to 700 families living in them; hence, they
became the first target market for PKC Laundries. After selling
the concept of value addition for the residents through the
facilities managers of these housing units, PKC Laundries
forged strategic alliances to gain exclusive rights to service the
residents. They would then set up a temporary pickup kiosk
(Exhibit 2) in these housing areas. When the Eastern and
Northern part of the city witnessed development, PKC quickly
made its services available in these zones of the city as well.
The three zones were 12 to 20 kilometers apart. In each zone,
they set up two kiosks.
The profile of PKC customers is that they are highly educated
and have higher incomes, and in the upper middle class
segment, many are double income families and thus have
increased disposable incomes. They are more conscious about
getting value for their time rather than value for their money. A
Harvard study about Indian professionals stated that they are
young and with higher disposable incomes hanker after
materialistic goals. This is typical of most Indian professionals
like lawyers, doctors, engineers, bankers, consultants and many
others. For most of them, life’s pleasures have gained more
importance. With a five-day work week, these professionals
have higher time for leisure, entertainment and socializing. A
lifestyle which demands the need to keep up appearances, in
turn fuels the demand for good clothes and personal grooming.
This leaves them with little or no time to attend to the usual
weekend chores; including doing the laundry. Another driving
factor for the demand is the increasing paucity of house maids
in urban metros and attendant problems of their frequent

16. absenteeism and high wages demanded by them. It is this gap
that PK and Chaitanya have chosen to exploit.
PKC has another set of customers. These are business
establishments, i.e. PKC even served the B2B clientele. Their
commercial clients include: hotels and resorts; spas and
educational institutions.
Sales revenue
At the end of the second year of operations, for its retail
consumer segment, PKC Laundries was servicing on an average
about 25 plus orders per day which translated to about 300
clothes per day with a per order average ticket size of Rs 500.
PKC Laundries’ commercial business segment was contributing
50 per cent of its revenue in their monthly revenue of Rs
650000-700000 (Exhibit 5).
In its retail segment although PKC was servicing 25 orders per
day on an average, it got 40 per cent of its retail revenue on
weekends alone.
Under their offer of “we have a plan for everyone” PKC
Laundries offered three services categorized as Basic, Classic
and Elite. The basic service covered only ironing of clothes, the
classic service covered both washing and ironing of clothes and
the elite service covered the dry cleaning of clothes. An
additional service offered at an additional price point was
starching the clothes. They charge their customers on per piece
basis or per order basis (Exhibit 4). They also have a
subscription model where customers can pay 50 per cent of the
charges upfront and the remaining 50 per cent at the end of their
monthly plan.
For their commercial segment, the pricing was customized
based on the ticket size and the add-ons required. For example,
the spas wanted their towels and bed sheets to be especially
scented, the resorts wanted a special sanitized packaging for
their bath and hand towels. The commercial business was
generated from seven spas, four hotels and resorts and seven
student hostels having 2,700 students.
According to the founders, “Financial year 2016-2017 was a

17. very special year as we have completed one full year of our
operations of PKC Laundries. Learnt a lot of things and a big
thanks to all our vendors, suppliers, customers and especially
our team who made us successful”.
Costs and operating margin
At PKC, 60 per cent per cent of the revenue collected was the
expense incurred for payments to the vendors for processing the
clothes. Another 15 per cent was spent on salaries, rents,
electricity, website maintenance, internet charges, fuel, vehicle
repairs and other similar overheads. A major direct cost in this
was that for pickup and delivery calculated at Rs 100 per order
amounting to another 10 per cent of expenses. As such all these
expenses left PKC Laundries with a gross margin of 15 per cent
only (Exhibit 5).
Opportunities and challenges
Laundry business is considered to be one of the best ideas for a
start-up owing to its nominal investment, low entry barriers,
huge markets and good returns. But it comes up with its own set
of challenges. At present, the laundry market is dominated by
many offline players; majority of whom are unorganized. The
pricing by the unorganized sector is perceived as affordable by
the middle class and upper middle class consumers. On the
other hand, organized players mainly cater to the need of
premium segments and offer only premium services. These price
points are not acceptable to the larger masses. Hence, start-ups
in the online laundry business are trying to fill this gap by
offering comprehensive solutions at affordable prices
(Choudhury, 2015).
Challenges faced by PKC Laundries
As the on-line laundry business can be built up with nominal
capital and has a huge neighbourhood market, it offers
reasonably good returns which makes the business lucrative.
Even then, PKC has to sail through a large number of
challenges, some of them are as follows:
· The main challenge in the retail segment is to find a customer
base that is ready to pay a higher price for convenience and in

18. the commercial segment is to find customers which have high
volume business. This is because, though the customer prefers
higher quality laundry services and likes to have the laundry
delivered to their homes, their willingness to pay extra for it is
unlikely. The enormity of this challenge to PKC promoters is
reflected in their oft repeated quote “It’s easy to impress anyone
with words but it’s hard to show them the reality of a high
quality good service”.
· The business is dependent on aggregating the local vendors,
who appear demanding and exploitative at times. Consolidating
and attracting the local dhobis to tie-up with the on demand
laundry services is a herculean task. Apart from that getting
skilled labour is also a major challenge.
· The laundry business requires managing of many processes
that cannot be isolated from human intervention and high
customer expectations. Hence customizing the services and
making them error free is a great challenge.
· Handling the daily pick up and drop is a nightmare in
logistics. The most common problems faced daily are heavy
traffic, customer not at home during delivery or pick up,
insufficient delivery team and time management.
Strategies adopted by PKC
In our two years of operations so far we have adopted many
strategies and made many tie ups with various entities like
Villas, Gated communities, Spas, Boutiques, Commercial
services. Every experience has empowered us and taught us
many lessons; some even costly but our motivation has not
faltered and now we are coming up with a strategy that is
already in place in a new way just like “Old wine in a new
bottle”.
Traditional laundry business is a labour- and capital-intensive
business with high expenses of operations and logistics. Hence,
investors shy away from investing in this industry and those
who had invested also burnt their hands and came out of the
business at the earliest. In contrast, PKC Laundries, as an on-
line start-up is slowly picking up and making a profit of around

19. Rs 100,000 per month. As of now, the company is exponentially
growing without seeking the help of any venture capitalist (VC)
and eagerly waiting to launch its business in other states.
PKC which gives utmost importance to quality strives to see a
happy customer. PKC believes that to run a successful laundry
business, it is important to listen to your customers’ requests
patiently, and act on them quickly as this will ensure the growth
of the company (Kumar, 2016). PK says that “delivery
executives are the face of the company as they are the ones who
interact with the clients.” The company ensures that these
executives are well groomed and attend to their clients’ needs
with utmost care. They make their customer’s feel like a king.
This strategy has helped PKC Laundries to grow organically,
owing to the word of mouth marketing.
Growth strategy and concerns for the road ahead
During a review meeting, PK and Chaitanya were discussing the
future of their business. Chaitanya suggested scaling up the
operations, getting funding through Series-A fund (Series-A
fund is given when the new venture starts generating revenue
from its business model) which would enhance their technology
and also strengthen their back-end operations by asset creation
of a fully automated factory with imported machinery and
equipment. With detailed calculations, he tried to convince PK
of the benefits this decision would bring including growing the
business at least ten times the current turnover and a higher
gross margin of 25 per cent as against the existing 15 per cent
gross margin.
PK however had ideas of his own. He was in a hurry to see the
business grow and expressed that funding and setting up a
processing plant would require two to three years, and they
would lose advantage to other existing start-ups and new
competition that was bound to come up. He felt that the way
forward was with aggressive marketing and strengthening the
existing back-end model of conducting the business. He was not
averse to getting some funding but opined that this money
should be spent on a marketing campaign and growth into other

20. cities. He argued that rapid growth could be achieved just as
Pick My Laundry had done. He stated market acquisition was
the only way forward even if profits had to be sacrificed and
cited the example of Uber cabs, Flipkart and Amazon as giants
who were getting funding solely on the strength of their market
size and had yet to turn in profits. To emphasize his point of
view PK also suggested that within no time they could be
selling their franchises to other budding start-ups and earns
additional revenues from that as well.
With no concrete decision taken, the meeting was inconclusive.