Turns, a vertical SaaS startup for the laundry industry, has raised $500K in pre-seed funding led by Better Capital, along with participation from PointOne Capital and a set of stellar angels. Turns helps laundromats deliver a modern experience to their users with a full stack software & hardware integrated solution that includes a modern POS, customer management, hassle-free payments, accounting, employee management, logistics optimisation as well as compliance making it an all-in-one control center for laundromat owners.
Turns launched their beta and has already signed up 50+ laundromats and dry cleaners across eight countries including US, India, UAE & others. Turns will primarily focus on the United States market and is targeting 1000 customers in the next 12-18 months.
Laundry is a $100B+ industry worldwide and $40B+ in the United States alone and is rapidly transforming from the old dimly-lit quarter-operated stores to modern main street businesses run by customer obsessed entrepreneurs serving consumers as well as businesses and picking up and delivering laundry like DoorDash. Laundry is the 4th biggest retail spend category in the United States and a recession-proof industry that contributed billions to the GDP and was identified as an essential business during COVID restrictions emphasising their broad appeal and need in society. Small and independent laundromats and cleaners serve 100M+ retail customers as well as large B2B customers from industries like hospitality, medical establishments & others to ensure a supply of clean laundry.
Laundromats have complex workflows involving machines & manual labor, multiple business models designed around self service, vending sales, wash dry & fold, pickup & delivery orders, routes & more. Laundromat owners increasingly need a system that can scale as quickly as their business does and one that integrates seamlessly into existing systems. Traditional solutions have fallen short of the modern needs of this multi-billion dollar industry – this is the opportunity Turns is focused on.
Turns founders, Sukanth Srivastav and Vishal Gupta, built a laundry startup in India in 2015 and understood the nuts and bolts of the laundry business. Though that startup did not work out, it left Sukanth and Vishal thinking how large the industry and its problems were. They built on those learnings and zeroed in on building the “Toast for Laundromats” and started working on Turns in 2022.
“Laundromats & cleaners represent one of the largest main street businesses in the United States that was severely underserved by modern software. We see an immense vertical SaaS opportunity and already understand the laundry business intimately”, said Sukanth who leads all things business at Turns.
“Laundry is a large business but a complex & competitive one. Laundromats need state-of-the-art software to deliver the experience that is being demanded by B2C as well as B2B customers. We are building Turns to do just that – an all-in-one system that laundromat owners can operate easily and scale their business with a stellar customer experience”, said Vishal who leads all things product & engineering at Turns.
“Vertical SaaS is a massive opportunity that is being unlocked by a new generation of companies that bring a modern Uber and DoorDash like experience to users across a wide range of verticals. Toast did it for restaurants and Turns is doing that for laundromats. We are excited to be ground zero partners to Sukanth and Vishal as they pursue this large vision”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout vertical SaaS companies like Open, Teachmint, Plobal and others.
