– Mr. Gaurav Nigam
People always get inspired when they read or listen to people’s success stories, about the hardships that they suffer and obstacles they are stuck with, they always want to know how
these people reach that position and how they jump at that level. People try to get experience from these stories.
We (QDC) had a brief conversation with Mr. Gaurav Nigam, during which he discussed their
path to success and growth with Quick-dry cleaning software.
My name is Gaurav Nigam. I’m the co- founder and director of the Tumble Dry Solutions private limited. The company is in the Laundry and dry-cleaning segment. I have professional work experience of around 17-18 years, Post this I gained work experience with two companies that are airtel and lava mobile then I started this venture of my own. It’s been almost 4.5 years now since we have been running this journey. We have also seen 3 heavily impacted COVID waves but we still stand out.
When we started Tumbledry. We were very new to this domain and QDC was 10 years old at that time in the laundry and dry-cleaning industry. QDC has lots of experience and they can easily detect the problem which we would encounter in the upcoming time and they have the ability to solve it, implement the things in a better way. QDC knows the best approach to grow in this Laundry and Dry-Cleaning industry.
If we started creating our software, then it would take lots of effort and time, which was not possible to make those efforts on building software despite focusing on our core job. With QDC we got the jump-start, they had an experienced team. They had already encountered most of the challenges that new players would encounter when starting their laundry and dry-cleaning business. And I think while choosing and going with QDC, we were able to make informed decisions to avoid unnecessary operational issues that we might have encountered while going on with the custom-made software.
Just like any good business-minded person will do, we went to multiple people who proposed software solutions. There were very few companies that had the experience and tenure of working in this industry. But there were multiple software development companies who were willing to create custom requirement-based software. So, we evaluated especially those companies who were already working in this field and the way people decide things between multiple options,
We met three pillars of QDC, Mr. Rachit, Mr. Vivek and Mr. Ashwani. All three of them carry different expertise. These three gave us tremendous confidence in the QDC and QDC team. Therefore, we developed faith that QDC is one such company that can serve us in the long term with its competence team. Thus, we decided to accelerate our journey under the leadership of these people.
QDC acted as a Technology partner and managed our Tech and IT department. And because of it, we were able to focus on the core job which is opening new stores and getting new customers. So, in a nutshell, the confidence in the team, and the leadership of the QDC team was the point that helped us decide in the favor of QDC.
The experience was very good, I got to see the very professional side of their sales team, operations team and support team. During the Onboarding QDC helps us a lot, they provide Tumbledry core technical team with training material, audios, videos, The documentation, flow chart and other things. QDC created a special ticket system for us.
As in pre-sale we were very happy with the kind of hand-holding we got from QDC, and it made our journey very very seamless and smooth.
The onboarding was amazing, From QDC we got document support, people support, and whenever we face the challenge in resolution or configuring the QDC System, In configuring or creating the store manager IDs or the pick-up boys ID and we took the entire gamut of things, we took the interface, we took the mobile application for the pick-up boys. We also opted for QDC as a partner for creating the mobile application for end consumers.
By partnering with QDC, we got to experience
There were lots of challenges, but the good part of this was we were able to overcome these challenges in a very swift and reliable manner with the QDC.
If I mention some challenges then, in starting, we wanted the workflow to be designed in a particular manner. We are a franchise company and expected the same when opting the partner, At that time QDC is designed for the entrepreneurs, so changing this software structure from enterprise to franchise manageable software is the first challenge that we encountered then we gave a request to QDC to create several things like central admin tool through which we can monitor rights, additional rights, etc. and The team at the QDC understood what our business needed and they were very open to that, the team being so flexible and understanding to us and were fast enough to deploy the change and create the super admin to resolve our problem.
The other problem that we have encountered and with the support of QDC was solved is the laundromat. That was the very big change that QDC had to undergo with us but they did it very well. We are happy to be partnering with them, and enjoying the fruit of that partnership now.
We already told QDC that we are going very aggressive in our expansion and therefore, we needed dedicated support, faster customizations, and faster introduction of new ideas, thoughts, and processes. We very clearly spelled out the QDC Team on the day we started the journey.
We were a new company, every day we discovered new things to be done, because when you are very involved in what you are doing, then we realize that yes we need more things to run this much faster, smoother, economical and as in when you realize this you need a good and able partner to help you, and fulfil whatever you realized as the character measures, so multiple those things happened along the journey, and we were able to get things done, and most of the things are on time. Sometimes QDC Delays because of some testing and only after the successful tests do QDC provides us the solution and always ensures that they are delivering a good quality product in the end.
There is a very important role of technology and QDC as our technology partner helped us a lot with this. When we go to a franchisee and telling that there is a 360-degree software solution and Pitch that we will give you CRM which is a web-based tool for your store manager to use at the stores and there is the mobile app for the pick-up and delivery boys through which they can create an order, delivery order and even they can collect the payments, this link to our call center which is also run our QDC CRM wherein whatever is happening at the stores or the runner mobile app is documented and captured and all of this is also linked to the customer mobile app. So, it encompasses all 360-degree CRM that we get from QDC and once you tell that this entire business is end to end tech-enabled then the kind of confidence and the kind of ease it gives to a business helps a lot to pitch this idea to a franchise partner.
So, one thing which I still like, even before partnering with QDC and after partnering with QDC is the professional and competent team that they have at the backend, because whether it is selling a product, the sales guy has to know a lot about how can the product can add value and whether it is about operationally managing the product and servicing the product. I think in both the sense that team competence is very important. And I still appreciate both the pre-sales period and after-sales period also.
Other than that, during the pre-sales period, they were able to give a lot of clarity and improve on whatever we had built in our house, that is how the systems should move. And they were able to add a lot of value before actually starting developing on this.
QDC used to suggest several things, features, and their practical use to get Tumbledry to improve every time. That’s why we were able to add to our knowledge under the QDC Partnership.
So this is something which I liked during the discussion phase, which is the pre-sales phase then the post-sale was launched. The speed and ease of execution, both of these things of QDC are something that is highly appreciated by Tumbledry. Overall, I can only say that the QDC team is a hardworking and Smart working team which we appreciate as a technology partner.
I usually take a macro view from QDC Software. So, once I log into the QDC software, I would like to see what is happening on an overall basis. So broadly, if I may say, I use
To analyze things like- How is this month progressing Vs last month? How was this quarter progressing versus last quarter? How is this year versus last year? What is the new customer addition base? How many customers have renewed their packages? How many repeat customers (Business) are we getting? What are the customers and the risk category? So, there are algorithms that are defined in the QDC software, which can indicate, okay, these customers now risk customers. They might have a chance of leaving us, going to somebody else. So, these are the features that I focus on at a macro level.
The agenda is to get to know whether everything is going right in the business or not. If there are any red alerts, if there are any emergency things, then I should be able to quickly identify those problems rather than wait for them to blow up and become big when they’re unmanageable.
So, there are two things that I as the director of Tumbledry focuses on,
Yes, we both managed to evolve around these years of partnership and it has been from both sides. We work professionally. Every six months we have a joint meeting with QDC wherein we discussed, what is the roadmap going to be? What are you going to develop? We discuss and argue a lot on several things that are important for us, our customers, and our partners. And we’ve been using this forum every six months to create a concrete roadmap on which things would be developed. Once agreed, we ensure that the path is now followed.
And therefore, if you will see in the last two and a half years of the journey of our relationship with QDC software from where we started, to what we have today, It has gone more than probably a hundred percent evolved. QDC has evolved and become better by 100%.
We are a 98% franchisee-owned stores company. As I have discovered over the last two years, QDC is like a never-ending business management and growth tool. It has probably 1000 features, but it is only known gradually once you start using it, then you start discovering it. There are a lot of features, which you didn’t realize in the beginning, like I think in the first year when we were just setting up our organization, we didn’t focus much on that. But in the last 12 months of our journey, it is at this time in the last 12 months when we’ve started discovering and demanding a lot of things from QDC. And after our demand, we realize it’s already there. We were simply not aware and were not using these tools.
So, as I said, it was like a never-ending business management and growth tool. You never stop learning new things or doing new things with such tools. And that is how things progress.
We have gone from zero stores to 500 plus stores, I think that’s the biggest thing that we’ve achieved. And it has all been on the backbone of QDC and it does happen in less than three years. So, a big thank you to the QDC team for helping us on our journey, towards becoming the number one #1 company in India in the Laundry and Dry Clean segment. And I hope they will partner with us when we further grow in our journey.
According to my prediction. I’ll tell you what we think inside Tumbledry. We believe that this industry has not seen professionally managed companies in the last 50 to 80 years. Dry cleaning as an industry has been there for the last 80 years. People have been wearing expensive clothes and cleaning them since then and which simply means Dry Cleaners have been there for ages.
If you look at India as a country, the opportunity is huge. Mind-blowingly huge, but there is no professional company, which is catering to every nook and corner of India professionally. When I say professional, I mean, there is a lot of manual labor, which is happening in the industry. Nobody’s trying to mechanize it. There are a lot of local and harmful detergents, which are being used.
Nobody’s trying to convert to a biodegradable or an organic detergent. There is no customer query resolution because people don’t have a customer service leg. There is very less use of technology because people still like to work on paper bills and cash collection, etc. So, this industry is very big and I’ll probably say only 4 to 5% of this industry is being catered to professionals. 95% of the industry has been catered by local mom-and-pop stores or unorganized service providers. And therefore, the potential that we see in this industry is maybe a hundred times more than what we’ve achieved to date. And technology is going to play a very big role because eventually, the customer is looking for convenience.
The convenience of placing an order, the convenience of tracking an order, pick and drop, making online payment, raising a query, and getting a resolution. And the technology has to evolve to ensure that it becomes all-encompassing.
To other business owners or people who are willing to get into the laundry and dry-cleaning business, I would just say that if you use QDC, then you’ll be able to run faster and grow faster because you will not be bothered about the hassles of daily operations and documenting and recording what is happening in your business.
So that will be one part of the business that will be taken care of. And you will not need to put any mind or money over there. You’ll be hassle-free. So that is one reason why you should use QDC.
I think what I would like to say is that QDC is a good company run by professionals. Technically, sound people, it has a pulse on the reality of the ground in terms of what is happening inside the store, in terms of the processes of how cloth enters the store, our cloth leaves the store. And things, whatever QDC Software has been doing till now I’ve been going in the right manner.
The only futuristic thing that I would have requested I would write to raise to the team is to keep on evolving technologically, keep on evolving, keep on doing new things, keep on trying new things, keep on developing new things, try and divide your focus between the store owner, the customer revenue and cost and see how you can help businesses improve on all of these aspects.
So, we have around more than 50,000 subscribers right now and combined (Android and IOS) it should be touching 100,000 subscribers at this time. I liked the QDC app a lot because the app is very simple to use and by just clicking four times, you can place or schedule a pickup.
It’s not something that a customer will use every day. It’s something that a customer would use probably once in 10 days or once in 15 days for ordering his laundry or dry-clean clothes. And therefore, the app is very simple. Just by 4 clicks, you are done. Somehow, I would like to see it become even in two clicks if this could happen. It is a very simplistic app, which is very simple right now. I would like to request the QDC Team to make it even simpler.
