At one point or another in our lives, there came a time when we were too busy to clean. You found that your schedule became too tight and busy, to even get an hour or two during the weekends to sit down and concentrate on cleaning. For some it got (gets) to a point where you have a rising pile of dirty dishes on the sink and no clean clothes to wear, so instead of getting them cleaned – because you simply don’t have the time – you end up buying new clothes or buying takeaway food.
You also end up sharing your apartment with pests and rodents, and you almost get to a point where your friends want to call the team from How Clean is your House, but instead of getting to such unclean extremes, why not call on Kisafi?
I was able to talk to co-founder, Janet Otieno; who manages Nairobi’s operations, on how Kisafi is making strides in trying to make premium laundry and home cleaning an affordable utility that is available to everyone, at the click of a button.
- Tell us a bit about Kisafi. What is Kisafi all about?
Kisafi means “it’s clean” in Swahili, and it is the only tech platform in Africa for requesting laundry and home cleaning. You can request premium home cleaning or free laundry pickup and drop off on our website or via our free “Kisafi” Android app.
We partner with the best cleaners [laundrettes, dry cleaners and mama nguos] in the business to deliver high quality. We also offer free, fast laundry pick and delivery with 24-48 hour turnaround, body cameras on our cleaners for extra safety and quality control, 30-50% off regular launderette and dry cleaning service rates.
- How did Kisafi start? Where did you get the inspiration to start such a venture?
KISAFI was started by a team of co-founders from Nairobi, New York, Lagos and Kampala. The idea came up last December, when some of the founders moved into apartments from the hotels they had been staying in Nairobi. Suddenly getting laundry and cleaning done became a major hassle – essentially having to hike several miles to find a launderette or make several calls to find a local trusted mama safi/ nguo to handle cleaning needs.
We believe there’s a real need in the market so we came together to solve this simple yet important need, thus Kisafi was born.
- Did you always picture getting into this line of work? Or what did you want to pursue as you grew up?
I’ve always wanted to run my own business, I didn’t quite know what exactly I would delve into but the process of building something new from scratch and/or and delivering solutions to needs has always been a passion.
To answer your question directly, no, I have not always dreamt of cleaning people’s messes. But one of my partners and I had a coming together on the need to deliver “convenience technologies” that free people up from doing things they didn’t want to do, while at the same time allowing those that love doing those things access to the markets they normally wouldn’t have been able to reach.
Growing up I wanted to be a lawyer, then came the dream of being a fashion designer/aficionado; I tried this for a couple years when I was running a kids’ clothing line before KISAFI happened.
- So far, have you seen the vision that you had set out for Kisafi take off?
Overall yes. I think we have seen a little more than our in terms of targets/goals/ metrics – we have tripled our goals for the first 3 months.
Our core vision has been to serve our customers with a platform for convenience by solving mundane, but important chores; starting with quality home cleaning and laundry services. This is happening each day and so far we have received good reception and amazing feedback from clients and nothing makes me happier.
- What makes your venture stand out from others? I mean as much as people are getting too busy to clean these days, we still are in a society where most people believe in managing their own dirt, so to speak?
That’s a great question, particularly with the addition of the fact that {culturally speaking} folks like to handle their own dirt. This cultural need has been reflected in our offering – we initially started the idea without the hand-washing option but a lot of folks actually preferred that.
What makes us stand out I think is our obsessive focus on quality and value. We really are obsessive, seriously, which makes it tough for folks who have not worked with a team with such expectations to adapt. But we’re making good strides. Customers appreciate the service and our obsessiveness and as you know middle-upper class Nairobians are very expressive, so we action their feedback pretty diligently to continue to meet expectations.
The other factor for us is that the leadership team also has fairly global experience so there’s diversity of thought and approach to doing things here that most other forms don’t have.
From a service point of view we are the first in market in this space across Africa providing tech-enabled solution to everyday chores.
Kisafi will also be running quarterly used clothing drives, in partnership with local NGOs, where we go around and collect used clothing from our clients and friends, clean them and drop off at the NGO for distribution to folks in need.
- How many clients and orders do you get in a day/week/month? What are some of the biggest clients and orders you’ve made?
In roughly the last 3 months we’ve had over 3000 orders; like I mentioned this is in multiples of what we had planned so we’ve had to rapidly expand.
We are in the consumer space, so we can’t really name client names but we’re happily serving some pretty important Kenyans. The largest single order we’ve had though was a dozen bags from a family that had just returned from a long vacation. That’s about 120kg of clothing in one order. Fun times.
- Give us a breakdown into what goes on in a typical day at Kisafi
Unfortunately our days aren’t typically sexy like most expect of startups. We start our day at 7am when we have a check in with our staff. We discuss our day plan and review the orders, pick-ups and drop offs of the day.
On the tech side, we are constantly working on stabilizing our platform as we grow, so we generally do test runs for bugs, and make notes of changes/input we’ve received. We call our clients and text prior to delivery alerting them of the delivery and factor in any change in plans.
At 5pm we tabulate a summary of the day – what went well, what didn’t, identify improvement areas and share notes for the following day.
Essentially, wash, rinse, dry repeat until we have a fun team event – usually with tons of beverages and food and oh yes, the gym. A number of us believe in healthy bodies=sound mind + the much needed energy to get through the day, so we [try to] work out 3-4 times a week; “try to” being the operative phrase.
- With the number of home thefts seen in the recent past, how do you assure a client that they can expect to find their house not only posh and clean, but also with their valuables intact?
We hire through a rigorous process, vetting and evaluating the credentials of our cleaners to ensure that we only hire trustworthy cleaners. Most of them are current or prior guesthouse/ hotel staff with years of training and good track record.
For additional security and quality control, we also have body cameras fixed to our cleaning pro aprons that record the cleaning. This has helped especially if one of our people moved an item and it’s misplaced or if a client has a complaint on cleaning, we just review the video and can tell exactly what went down.
On the security point, several clients have asked to have the same cleaning professionals come get their place clean for comfort, however, we try to ensure we rotate our professionals – while this might be uncomfortable for clients initially. Statistically speaking, the long term value of not having an overly “familiar” cleaner know the blueprint of your home supersedes the initial discomfort.
- What motivated you to start such a venture?
The grand idea to start Kisafi came at a time when I felt the need to move on from the fashion/retail space to solve other problems/get into something new for me. I’ve never been a techie but the complement of the team’s skillset came together quite well. Plus this idea seemed a perfectly good mix of applying what I know of logistics management, sales and service.
A major driver beyond the reality that this meets real customer needs is the jobs creation and revenue growth angle for our partners. For example, so far about 27 cleaning partners have been signed up on the platform, including hospitality industry veterans and alumni looking to increase their income levels in their spare time, given most of them work shifts in hotels. This has been a huge motivating factor.
- Is Nairobi open to what you do and if not, what do you think could be better?
Nairobi is receptive to what we do. That is why we keep on serving daily and happily.
It’s a little tough changing cultural norms and educating people on the service, most folks tend to want to know where their items are heading to and/or having a cleaning professional that comes to their homes to do their laundry and cleaning.
We’ve received questions like “How do I know you won’t steal my clothes?” “Why can’t I bring it to you?” “How can I just click on the app and my laundry will get done? I don’t understand”; so we’re working hard at letting folks know how this works and reassure them on the level of safety and quality.
- Please give us a breakdown into the services you provide.
Right now we basically solve two sets of chores – laundry/ dry cleaning and Home cleaning.
For laundry, a flat rate bag that fits about 2 weeks of laundry can weigh up to 9-10kg, with the different options of hand wash and machine wash respectively, that would amount to Kshs 750 for Hand wash while machine wash is Kshs 1,200.
Home cleaning is simply measured by the number of rooms and baths – we’ve tried to standardize this as well to minimize surprises. 1bed/ 1 bath goes for Ksh.750, 2bed/ 2 baths, Kshs 950 and it goes on from there.
- What are some of the biggest and most memorable moments you have had as a business so far?
Our most memorable moment was when we did our first order. It was 2 bags of laundry and we were so excited to have the order come through. I still remember the moment it came in and we picked up and delivered. I delivered it personally.
- What are some of the ups and down you’ve faced in your business?
The challenges faced [and are still facing] are numerous, but our top 2 are:
- Finding the right talent/ partners: Given the fact that we hold ourselves to the highest standards possible, it has been tough finding square pegs for our holes. This applies to both KISAFI staff as well as our cleaning partners – individual cleaning pros and companies alike.
As such, we have not stopped recruiting; we interview close 10-15 folks each week for jobs ranging from marketing, dispatch folks to actual cleaning professional roles.
- Customer education: Being a new service we have had to spend copious amounts of time fielding calls from people that would rather call in than order online, questions on if/why we can be trusted with folks’ dirty clothes and the likes. We have stayed the course and continued sharing with our prospects and customers via social media platforms on the how KISAFI works. This will be an ongoing challenge until KISAFI becomes a household name. Soon.
- Do you have any other side businesses or personal ventures apart from Kisafi?
No, Kisafi is my heart and soul and I give it 100% of my time. I think it’s a mistake to split focus this early in the development of a venture, which a lot of startups usually do to try to make ends meet. But we don’t have that problem; we took our time planning out the venture to keep us going for a while without falling for the temptation to venture out. We clearly split roles, so that those of us who have other ventures are more “passive” partners/advisors e.g., our co-founder Sarah Nakintu has a luxury leather goods {bags} line KINTU NYC, which she manages as well while getting us ramped up for Kampala launch later in the year.
- Where do you see yourself as a company in the next ten years?
In the next 10 years we see ourselves serving clients across Africa – precisely to be a household name for chores and tech enabled convenience like KENGEN for power, Uber for transportation etc. We are planning at expanding the services across Sub-Saharan Africa in the next two – four years.
To get more information about Kisafi and their services, visit their website, Facebook page, Twitter page and their Instagram as well.
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