Flush with fresh funds, UK ‘eco laundry’ startup Oxwash spins up growth plans – TechCrunch

Oxwash, a UK startup that’s spent the last few years applying high tech processes to shrink the environment cost of dry cleaning and commercial laundry, has trousered £10 million (~$12M) in Series A funding to expand its nationwide footprint.

Currently its service is available in five UK cities: London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Manchester but — flush with fresh funding — it’s aiming for broader domestic coverage and eyeing a US launch after that.

Oxwash bagged a £1.4M seed back in 2020 — and has now pulled in a total of £15.7M since being founded back in 2017, including from a public equity crowdfunder last year (which netted it £500k from around 320 Crowdcube investors); and via a £2.08M seed top-up.

The Series A was led by Untitled VC, with existing backer Biz Stone (Twitter co-founder) also participating, along with Indeed founder Paul Forster, and Holly and Sam Branson. Other named returning investors include Reckitt venture arm Access VC, Pentland Group, Ascension Ventures, Vala Capital, and Truesight Ventures. While new investors in the round include 8 Dimension Ventures, System Capital Management and Khimji Ramdas LLC.

Oxwash’s alternative spin on commercial laundry includes a “gentle” ‘wet cleaning’ technique to replace dry cleaning which involving the use of biodegradable detergents (rather than “harsh” solvents) — and it also touts reduced water consumption (claiming savings of 4L per 1kg of clothes washed).

Additionally, it uses ozone as a disinfecting agent, to sterilize and deoderize fabrics at lower temperatures than traditional commercial laundry processes.

To ensure economies of scale, the on-demand laundry startup operates its services out of a handful of hubs (currently three) — aka its service center “lagoons” — using a fleet of cargo e-bike and electric vehicles for pick ups and drop offs to minimize its carbon emissions.

In a major development, it’s announcing that it’s gained B Corporation status — and claims to be the only laundry and wet-cleaning company in the world that’s gained this certification for standards of environmental, social responsibility and transparency, bolstering its eco credentials.

Oxwash customers span both businesses and individuals seeking on-demand laundry service (think the likes of individual Airbnb hosts up to NHS trusts). On the b2b side, it says customers include hotels, hospitals, universities, hospitality and circular fashion outlets.

Back in May 2020, Oxwash was reporting “several hundred” business customers and more than 4,000 individual users. Its press release doesn’t offer updated figures (we’ve asked) but it touts quadrupled revenue in the last 12 months, as well as stating it’s achieved “operational profitability” across its three washing facilities.

The new funding will go on UK expansion, with the startup planning to build a giant, centralized washing facility which it intends to use to service clients “up and down the country”.

It’s also planning a US launch (although, back in May 2020, it was talking about European expansion — so has presumably it’s reconfigured its international growth plans).

Other plans for the funding include investment in new methods to further enhance its approach, such as acoustic drying — i.e. using soundwaves instead of heat to dry textiles.

It also mentions potentially applying robotics and computer vision for further optimization of its processes.

Additionally, in the next 12 months Oxwash says it has a goal of completely eliminating scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions from its operations.

Commenting in a statement, CEO Dr Kyle Grant said: “This new funding will be used primarily to develop our technology and invest deeply into the complete decarbonisation of our proprietary washing process. Up to 30% will be used for expanding our software technology capabilities, 30% for the deployment of our nationwide processing facility and the remainder for business development and growth.”