The Sydney start-up making a serious splash with its waterless cleaning technology.
THIS Sydney start-up is cashing in with its genius waterless washing technology — and in doing so is changing the way we clean our cars.
Nick Whigham
news.com.au
September 20, 2017
A PAIR of Sydney friends and PhD dropouts are cashing in with their burgeoning start-up idea, and in the process are helping to revolutionise the way we wash our cars.
Chemical engineer Farid Mirmohseni, 24, and mechanical engineer Reza Keshavarzi, 29, co-founded the car-washing platform WipeHero which allows users to request an on-the-spot car wash — all without using any water or power.
They like to think of it as an environmentally-friendly “Uber for car cleaning”.
Long gone are the days of indiscriminately hosing down the car in the driveway but washing your car can still use anywhere between 100 to 200 litres of water, equating to billions of litres of water which would be needed to wash Australia’s 17 million registered cars.
On top of that, the process of washing your car at home can lead to harmful chemicals making their way into our storm drains, and damage groundwater and lawns.
Understanding the need to find a better and more sustainable way for proud car owners to keep their vehicle clean, Mr Mirmohseni, with a little help from his dad who is also a chemical professor, spent two years in the research and development phase to create the company’s cleaning technology.
The result it their very own waterless, scratch-free polymer technology that eliminates grime and dirt and leaves a shine.
“If you search waterless products, there’s thousands on the market. But we differentiate ourselves by our product being biodegradable and it’s actually safe for our washers to use it,” Mr Mirmohseni told news.com.au.
“It’s good for the car, it’s good for the environment and also good for the person applying it,” he said, making their product rather unique.
The spray-on solution which the business is built on works by effectively creating a bubble around the dirt and grime on the car’s surface, Mr Mirmohseni said, allowing it to be easily lifted off.
“Once you spray onto any surface ... it emulsifies the dirt and the grime. What that means is it basically forms a bubble around all the dirt and the grime and detaches it from the car’s surface,” he said. “And that’s when we pick it up using a special technique with a micro fibre cloth.
“And because of this detachment, there’s actually no chance of the car getting scratched,” he said.
The video below shows just how effective the WipeHero spray-on solution is.
Starting in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs at the beginning of 2016, the pair launched the business services component of their start-up and have since won contracts with a range of businesses including popular car-sharing platform GoGet as well as a few Sydney Ferrari and Maserati dealerships.
The company has grown to employ about 30 people and earlier in the year received a $100,000 grant from the NSW government as part of a program which aims to support potential high-growth, job-creating businesses.
“This is a great example of how two young Sydney engineers combined their skills and entrepreneurial talent to create jobs and stimulate the NSW economy,” NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business, John Barilaro said when awarding the grant money.
“It’s this type of fast-growing, innovative company that the NSW Government wants to invest in, to help start-ups like WipeHero grow and create more new jobs.”
Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength and are currently partnering with a major car company in confidential trial to hopefully be contracted to wash their huge fleet of cars.
Currently, the start-up generates over a million dollars in revenue per year from its business partnerships, according to its twenty-year-old founders.
In the last few months, the company has launched its individual consumer platform allowing users to download an app and request a wash with the click of a button. Just like Uber, you simply plug in the location of your car and a trained washer will be dispatched to come and clean it at your home, the office or just on the side of the road.
“At the beginning it was a logistical problem for us, we were getting bookings from Manly to Parramatta,” Mr Mirmohseni said. “That’s why we focused on businesses which have a fleet of a few hundred cars in a location.”
But as the business grew, it started offering individual washes to customers in areas nearby its major business partners.
WipeHero now offers its consumer platform to more than 60 suburbs in inner Sydney and Melbourne and hires a small army of washers in those cities.
An individual wash starts at $29 for the outside only and goes up to $69 for the most comprehensive inside and outside clean.
With the introduction of the app, the company had over 2900 new customers last month, Mr Mirmohseni said.
As the popularity of service continues to grow, the team behind WipeHero seem equally excited about the fact they’re able to spread the message about what they view as the massive amount of water and electricity waste that goes into washing cars. But not if they can help it.
THIS Sydney start-up is cashing in with its genius waterless washing technology — and in doing so is changing the way we clean our cars.
Nick Whigham
news.com.au
September 20, 2017
 |
| Farid Mirmohseni and Reza Keshavarzi |
Chemical engineer Farid Mirmohseni, 24, and mechanical engineer Reza Keshavarzi, 29, co-founded the car-washing platform WipeHero which allows users to request an on-the-spot car wash — all without using any water or power.
They like to think of it as an environmentally-friendly “Uber for car cleaning”.
Long gone are the days of indiscriminately hosing down the car in the driveway but washing your car can still use anywhere between 100 to 200 litres of water, equating to billions of litres of water which would be needed to wash Australia’s 17 million registered cars.
On top of that, the process of washing your car at home can lead to harmful chemicals making their way into our storm drains, and damage groundwater and lawns.
Understanding the need to find a better and more sustainable way for proud car owners to keep their vehicle clean, Mr Mirmohseni, with a little help from his dad who is also a chemical professor, spent two years in the research and development phase to create the company’s cleaning technology.
The result it their very own waterless, scratch-free polymer technology that eliminates grime and dirt and leaves a shine.
“If you search waterless products, there’s thousands on the market. But we differentiate ourselves by our product being biodegradable and it’s actually safe for our washers to use it,” Mr Mirmohseni told news.com.au.
“It’s good for the car, it’s good for the environment and also good for the person applying it,” he said, making their product rather unique.
The spray-on solution which the business is built on works by effectively creating a bubble around the dirt and grime on the car’s surface, Mr Mirmohseni said, allowing it to be easily lifted off.
“Once you spray onto any surface ... it emulsifies the dirt and the grime. What that means is it basically forms a bubble around all the dirt and the grime and detaches it from the car’s surface,” he said. “And that’s when we pick it up using a special technique with a micro fibre cloth.
“And because of this detachment, there’s actually no chance of the car getting scratched,” he said.
The video below shows just how effective the WipeHero spray-on solution is.
Starting in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs at the beginning of 2016, the pair launched the business services component of their start-up and have since won contracts with a range of businesses including popular car-sharing platform GoGet as well as a few Sydney Ferrari and Maserati dealerships.
The company has grown to employ about 30 people and earlier in the year received a $100,000 grant from the NSW government as part of a program which aims to support potential high-growth, job-creating businesses.
“This is a great example of how two young Sydney engineers combined their skills and entrepreneurial talent to create jobs and stimulate the NSW economy,” NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business, John Barilaro said when awarding the grant money.
“It’s this type of fast-growing, innovative company that the NSW Government wants to invest in, to help start-ups like WipeHero grow and create more new jobs.”
Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength and are currently partnering with a major car company in confidential trial to hopefully be contracted to wash their huge fleet of cars.
Currently, the start-up generates over a million dollars in revenue per year from its business partnerships, according to its twenty-year-old founders.
In the last few months, the company has launched its individual consumer platform allowing users to download an app and request a wash with the click of a button. Just like Uber, you simply plug in the location of your car and a trained washer will be dispatched to come and clean it at your home, the office or just on the side of the road.
“At the beginning it was a logistical problem for us, we were getting bookings from Manly to Parramatta,” Mr Mirmohseni said. “That’s why we focused on businesses which have a fleet of a few hundred cars in a location.”
But as the business grew, it started offering individual washes to customers in areas nearby its major business partners.
WipeHero now offers its consumer platform to more than 60 suburbs in inner Sydney and Melbourne and hires a small army of washers in those cities.
An individual wash starts at $29 for the outside only and goes up to $69 for the most comprehensive inside and outside clean.
With the introduction of the app, the company had over 2900 new customers last month, Mr Mirmohseni said.
As the popularity of service continues to grow, the team behind WipeHero seem equally excited about the fact they’re able to spread the message about what they view as the massive amount of water and electricity waste that goes into washing cars. But not if they can help it.
No comments:
Post a Comment