KISAFI, an on-demand laundry and home cleaning startup which offers home cleaning or free laundry pickup and drop off from its web platform www.kisafi.com or via its “Kisafi” Android app is set to launch in Kampala, Uganda and Lagos, Nigeria after a few months operating in Nairobi, Kenya.
Founded by a diverse team from Nairobi, New York and Lagos, with background ranging from McKinsey & co., Citigroup, Delivery.com, and other global and local firms, Kisafi, went live in Kenya in March to bring the on-demand home cleaning and laundry services to the country to disrupt the home cleaning and laundry industry.
‘Kisafi’ meaning it’s clean in Swahili, aims to be a convenient tech platform for instant booking of high quality, reliable laundry and home cleaning with 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee from its highly trained and background checked cleaners and state of the art cleaning and laundry equipment.
“See us as the uber for laundry and home cleaning,” FO Odunuga and Janet Otieno, the co-founders told TechMoran at their March launch in Nairobi. ”Our users request premium laundry pickup and drop off and low cost home cleaning services with a tap of the button via our free “Kisafi” Android app or at Kisafi.com.”
Kisafi promises convenience, quality and price advantage for its laundry services and home cleaning services. The on-demand home cleaning, laundry and dry-cleaning pickup and delivery service aims to partner with a reputable local recruiting agencies in these three markets to access trained home and laundry cleaners, vet them and assign them duties on-demand. Kisafi says it retains the quality control and training while providing income for its cleaners.
Launching in Kampala and Lagos is huge for the firm as this gives it a wider market and makes it the first in sub-Saharan African to be live in more than one market. South Africa’s Washr and SweepSouth, are great examples of the on-demand home cleaning and laundry service providers but only focused on South Africa.
KAMPALA! we’re getting warmed up…get signed up for your first free order. | https://t.co/nafRtOQniH pic.twitter.com/ImHT4weELs
— KISAFI (@HelloKisafi) October 17, 2016
The firm is now looking for talented folks on part-time or full-time basis who are passionate about technology, marketing, operations, delivery riders and cleaning to join the Kisafi team. Kenya has 32m internet users, Uganda has 12m internet users and Nigeria has 97m internet users meaning Kisafi is targeting over 140m people in total. To acquire just 10 percent of these, Kisafi will need millions of dollars in its bank accounts before it starts to make substantial revenues. Without enough funding, Kisafi will not even cover a third of Lagos before it closes shop.
Secondly, most of these markets have other players too, therefore Kisafi will need more than passion to survive and then thrive, otherwise the model is viable and the problem is huge.
“The inspiration came in 2015, when our founders were living here temporarily, in a rented flat, and couldn’t find laundry services without going through hoops or paying an arm and a leg. Such services are commonplace in their countries of origin with startups like flycleaners, handy and washio who provide similar services seamlessly,” Otieno told TechMoran after the Nairobi launch.
