SmartClean Technologies, a startup providing IoT- and AI-powered solutions for the cleaning industry, has secured SGD3.7 million (US$2.7 million) in a pre-Series A funding, co-led by SEEDS Capital (the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore) and an unnamed environmental services company in Singapore, its Founder and CEO Lav Agarwal told e27.
Other strategic investors who joined the round are Ecocare (a leading hygiene company in Indonesia) and co-CEOs of Oneberry Technologies (a security automation company in Singapore).
This round, which was closed earlier this year, brings Smartclean’s total funds raised to date to US$3.4 million, which also includes venture debt.
In addition, the venture had raised government grants in the early days of its operations.
Agarwal further added SmartClean is currently in the process of raising US$10 million in Series A from several investors, including a large VC firm with operations in India and Southeast Asia. This round is expected to close in March 2021.
The beginning
SmartClean was founded by Agarwal, Abhishek Mishra (PhD from NUS), and Stella Aw.
The idea for Smartclean occurred when Agarwal and Aw met in late 2016 to discuss the challenges faced by the cleaning company Spotless, which was co-founded by Aw in 2012.
Also Read: This on-demand cleaning startup adjusts with the needs of Singapore’s market
“We quickly realised that lack of tech adaptation is a major challenge and we sensed huge potential for a groundbreaking digital transformation in the cleaning industry,” he said.
The duo brought this idea to Agarwal’s friend Mishra and SmartClean took shape.
Launched in early 2017 at CapitaLand’s IoT accelerator programme, SmartClean is working on “reimagining the next-gen cleaning industry” and building IoT solutions which will monitor spaces, learn from the facility data and autonomously run cleaning operations of properties with a team of cleaners and robots.
“We are on a mission to fundamentally change how cleaning is done today. We equip facility management and cleaning companies with data-driven solutions to deliver the best,” Agarwal claimed.
A sidelined industry
According to Agarwal, cleaning and security form two of the biggest segments of facility management. While the security industry is tech-driven with automated surveillance and command centres, cleaning operations are still done manually, with cleaners going around and doing physical checks and cleaning on a scheduled and periodic basis.
Lav Agarwal, Founder and CEO, SmartClean
“Cleaning is also seen as a dead-end job and hence there are very high attrition rates, thereby becoming a challenge for a cleaning operator to continuously train and deploy new cleaners,” he said. “It’s also hard to standardise cleanliness since there is no real-time visibility, and cleaners are only identifying issues during periodic checks.”
This is where SmartClean’s solutions assume significance.
“The system uses advanced data analytics, Machine Learning and predictive algorithm to compute usage and cleaning requirements, which are used to send alerts to cleaners with detailed work instructions and used by managers to plan resources in advance. This helps the industry to move from scheduled to on-demand operations, increasing productivity by over 30 per cent and improving service quality, resulting in net savings for the organisation,” he explained.
SmartClean is also rolling out a one-stop SaaS platform, called Matrix, for MSME cleaning companies to digitise their back-end operations, including workforce management, contract management, audit and payroll.
The clientele
SmartClean was commercially launched after a year-long trial in 2019 and has expanded to both commercial and public properties, such as Mount Elizabeth Hospital, Jewel Changi Airport, State Court, NParks, Bus interchanges, and JTC Summit.
It also has ongoing projects in Singapore, India, the UAE, Indonesia and Malaysia, and is starting off in Hong Kong, Australia and Thailand.
Currently, the startup is employing 40 people and planning to grow this number to 80 by the end of this year.
The market size
The cleaning industry is a US$300-billion industry globally, of which 60 per cent is organised commercial cleaning segment. The industry employs around 50 million people and manpower drives 80 per cent of the cost.
Also Read: Singapore’s Solubots unveils self-cleansing disinfecting robots
About 1.2 million people are involved in cleaning operations in India alone, with a total market size of approximately US$10 billion.
Did COVID-19 hit your business?
“Well, cleaning is an evergreen and recession-proof business. In COVID-19 times, the need of cleaning and hygiene has only gone up. As cleanliness and hygiene gained priority, something that was good to have, became a must to have, and so did our solution,” Agarwal replied.
He also shared while SmartClean is seeing good growth, it has been facing challenges commercialising in low-labour cost markets like India, as it’s hard to justify the ROI.
“So, we have worked on market-specific pricing with sensor-as-a-service model which eases the procurement and justifies a positive ROI from almost day one,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: SmartClean
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