Kenyan on-demand home cleaning and laundry service Kisafi is expanding to Uganda and Nigeria having seen strong uptake since its launch in Nairobi.
Disrupt Africa reported in April Kisafi – which means “it is clean” in Swahili – had launched in Kenya, allowing homeowners to use the web or an Android app to have their laundry picked up and taken care of or their homes cleaned.
The platform had been in private beta since December 2015, and has since seen strong growth in customer numbers, orders and revenues.
Kisafi, which has a founding team with backgrounds at McKinsey & Co, Citigroup and Accenture, is now expanding to other markets, having launched a closed beta in Kampala which will run until December. It will also open a closed beta test in Lagos next month, which will run until February.
“We’ve always had a pan-African focus from day one, the key decision is where next, and several factors go into deciding what markets to go next – adoption, readiness, market size, competitive space and political climate,” co-founder FO Odunuga told Disrupt Africa.
“For me, our “pop-up” adoption experiments – where we actually go to cities we’re evaluating with a demo app to get a sense of uptake and what it takes to deliver – proved very valuable to gain on-the-ground insights, first hand.”
In Nairobi, Kisafi has signed partnerships laundry and dry cleaning service providers, and also has a tech-enablement suite, including body cameras for the recording of the cleaning process and a high-grade photo filing system for before and after wash clothing pictures. It will follow this same model in other markets.
The startup has seed investment from angels in Lagos and New York, and is aiming to take a significant portion of Africa’s emerging affluent market.
