The premium carwash provider Instawash might have started life in Korea but the co-founders of the Thai business believe Thailand is ready for an app-based service that will clean your car anywhere at any time.
A growing middle class and their preference for digitally enabled and environment-friendly services are fuelling the need for a more convenient and greener way to wash cars, say Jack "Jay" Attaskulchai and Mehran Zahraei.
The partners in the Bangkok-based startup told Asia Focus that the idea came when they first visited a premium carwash in South Korea. They believed the model could be replicated in Thailand.
"Jay went first to South Korea to check it out and he came back to ask me to confirm the idea, so I went," Mr Zahraei recalled, adding that the two were in different jobs at the time. Mr Zahraei was in digital marketing while Mr Jack was an investor in various startups around Asia.
"Our South Korean partner back then was my friend and the idea was sound so I invested in it personally," Mr Jack said. "After we dug deeper, we found that the cost of the operation could be much lower."
Instawash uses a special cleaning solution and very little water, with the entire process documented by GoPro cameras worn by its detailers.
The space for premium carwash service in Thailand is "almost green", Mr Jack said. Comparatively lower labour costs and rents mean there is potential to scale the business quickly.
"The app was meant to reach the new generation while South Koreans are already accustomed to using mobile apps to order services at their convenience, and we thought that this lifestyle service could be something completely new for Thailand," Mr Zahraei said.
The location-based, on-demand application allows customers to avoid traffic and queues by pinning their location on a map and scheduling a time for the car to be cleaned.
Mr Zahraei says the traditional carwash "has not changed for the last five decades", but the Instawash difference is that it brings the service directly to the customer.
"There have been businesses that have done delivery carwash but you still have to drive to a fixed place and when they do come to you, they still cause a mess and they still have to use your water," he said.
"The beauty of Instawash is that we are eco-friendly as we use only two or three litres of water per wash, depending on the size of the car."
Instawash partners Jack “Jay” Attaskulchai and Mehran Zahraei.
Water consumption is low because the company uses a liquid cleaning agent originally developed for racing cars. Used by Instawash in other countries, it is imported and mixed in-house in Thailand.
"With this, we can wash your car wherever it's parked. Whether it's in a parking lot at the shopping mall, at the office, or your home," Mr Zahraei said. "We don't need to move your car or make a mess because we don't use that much water."
But the partners found customers were sceptical about "waterless" cleaning at first, so they modified their promotional material to say that they did use water -- just not the 200-300 litres used in conventional cleaning.
Using the cleaning agent requires specific techniques and microfibre towels, and staff have to be specially trained. Instawash Thailand is currently hiring around 15 local employees, or "detailers" as they are known, for the job.
Having just started last year, the company's current capacity is only 12 cars per day in Bangkok, but it is looking to expand to other cities and expects to be cleaning 200 to 300 cars daily as the business grows.
"We are actually overbooked with more demand than supply," Mr Zahraei said. "Our detailers are professionally trained to look after your car and they need at least two weeks to one month of training, depending on their skills, before we are confident that they will be able to offer the standardised service we're focusing on."
He believes one thing traditional car washes lack is quality control, so Instawash Thailand has a system to make sure its detailers have done their job properly. That includes equipping them with GoPro cameras to document the entire service via video that can be examined on the spot.
"This is a white-glove service where we care for everything from the condition of the paint all the way down to how to wipe a car in the correct way to ensure that the next time you order the service, it will be done in the same way," he added.
Safety is also a priority and the firm does background checks on all detailers before hiring them. The app shows the face of the person who will be coming to clean your car with an ID card. That's because almost 40% of the customers are female.
Women say they like the service "because they don't have to sit and wait, for example, at a gas station all by themselves where they don't feel entirely safe or comfortable", Mr Jack said.
The website has a feedback platform and Mr Zahraei says customer satisfaction exceeds 90%. In Asia Focus interviews with previous customers, the price of the service was often emphasised.
Pricing ranges from a "silver package" with the lowest price of 400 baht to clean the exterior of a small sedan such as a Honda Jazz or Mini Cooper, to a "platinum package" starting at 700 baht for exterior cleaning with premium coating and interior cleaning for a small sedan. The most expensive platinum service costs 1,350 baht for anything bigger than a Toyota Alphard or other minivan.
Although the service is called premium, the owners aren't fussy about what kind of cars they clean.
"We've done anything from pickup trucks to food delivery vans all the way to a Rolls-Royce," Mr Zahraei said.
"A normal wash at a gas station could cost something like 150-180 baht but our exterior plus interior cleaning which starts at 500 baht can actually clean and condition your leather seats and dashboard because of the liquid that we use. … I wouldn't say that it's expensive. I would call it affordable, because you're getting the value."
The Instawash brand is now in Thailand, South Korea and Japan. Mr Jack, who used his own money to kickstart the business, is now looking for venture capital to help take the startup to the next level. Beyond more cities in Thailand, he has his eyes on Singapore, Malaysia and Australia.
It is also looking beyond business-to-consumer for business-to-business opportunities, such as a recent partnership with BMW Thailand at various events.
"In the future we will branch out into other services where there is phase one, two and three, and we need partners to help us get there," he said.