UK/INTERNATIONAL
Oxwash, the laundry and drycleaning startup bent on overhauling traditional laundry service, today announced a £1.4m investment from TrueSight Ventures, Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com), Founders Factory and other angel investors.
Oxwash’s service is taking medical-grade laundry technology typically used in spaceship and hospital sterilisation and making it accessible to all. The new investment will be used to expand Oxwash’s reach across South East England and scale the team
Oxwash, founded by former NASA engineer Kyle Grant, uses ozone generation technology and delivery to provide coronavirus (Covid-19) disinfection for customers. Oxwash combines ozone disinfection with thermal and chemical processes to wash to pharmaceutical-grade, and to ensure the full eradication of bacterial, fungal, and viral agents in customers' items. The startup also uses no-contact pickups, the use of electric-cargo bikes adapted with portable ozone generators to sterilise items and dissolvable laundry bags to eliminate coronavirus transmission through fabric and clothing.
Grant, Oxwash CEO and co-founder, said: “We’ve developed a service in the past two months that is available to provide coronavirus disinfection. Our original goal for the business remains to help the planet – originally focussing on the eco-friendly nature of our tech compared to traditional laundry options.
“However, in recent weeks it’s become apparent that our help is needed in keeping people safe. In light of the current coronavirus situation, we are working closely with NHS and vulnerable groups to provide support when needed as well as doubling down on our software development, including our app, and rolling out the service to London later this year while continuing to focus on our original locations – Oxford and Cambridge.”
Biz Stone, entrepreneur and co-founder of Twitter, added: “Our world is in unknown territory and people are turning to tech for options to improve their lives. Oxwash is using revolutionary technology that can be utilised to prevent viral transmission on textiles during this period and give people reassurance about their safety and those of their loved ones.”
Oxwash has turned its attention to how its capabilities and capacity can support the NHS, healthcare and vulnerable people at home. The venture is now providing laundry services to the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine trial as well as GP surgeries. Oxwash is also serving the vulnerable members of our community, including care homes, those who need assistance at home and hotels that have been requisitioned by the NHS to house their key workers.
"The Oxwash express washing service has been a huge asset to our practice in not only enabling us to protect our staff with clean gear but also protecting our patients. A truly amazing team of dedicated professionals who have quickly stepped up their game to providing a fantastic service to help the NHS in these challenging times," added Dr Paul Ch'en GP Partner, Observatory Medical Practice.
Igor Tikhturov from TrueSight Ventures, said: “We have been impressed by Oxwash’s ambition to build the world’s best laundry, dry cleaning and ironing service and its use of space-age technology to achieve this. With the team’s brilliant engineering minds working on new ways to adapt the traditional laundry market they are finding ways to make easy and convenient access to medical grade laundry services that have zero carbon emissions and save water at the same time.”
• Oxwash is part of Founders Factory’s accelerator programme and Grant was recently selected as Forbes Europe’s 30 under 30. OXWASH is an alumni of the Oxford University Foundry L.E.V8 programme in the 2018/19 cohort.
