The Lean Startup: The Million Copy Bestseller Driving Entrepreneurs to Success

by Eric Ries

THE VILLAGE LAUNDRY SERVICE In India, due to the cost of a washing machine, less than seven percent of the population have one in their homes. Most people either hand wash their clothing at home or pay a Dhobi to do it for them. Dhobis take the clothes to the nearest river, wash them in the river water, bang them against rocks to get them clean, and hang them to dry, which takes two to seven days. The result? Clothes are returned in about ten days and are probably not that clean. Akshay Mehra had been working at Procter & Gamble Singapore for eight years when he sensed an opportunity. As the brand manager of the Tide and Pantene brands for India and ASEAN countries, he thought he could make laundry services available to people who previously could not afford them. Returning to India, Akshay joined the Village Laundry Services (VLS), created by Innosight Ventures. VLS began a series of experiments to test its business assumptions. For their first experiment, VLS mounted a consumer-grade laundry machine on the back of a pickup truck parked on a street corner in Bangalore. The experiment cost less than $8,000 and had the simple goal of proving that people would hand over their laundry and pay to have it cleaned. The entrepreneurs did not clean the laundry on the truck, which was more for marketing and show, but took it off-site to be cleaned and brought it back to their customers by the end of the day.