Today Oxwash, the space-age and eco-friendly laundry and dry-cleaning startup, has announced a €1.6 million investment from TrueSight Ventures, Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com), Founders Factory and other angel investors. The Oxford-based startup, which is taking medical-grade laundry technology typically used in spaceship and hospital sterilisation and making it accessible to all, will use the fresh funds to expand across England and scale the team.
Oxwash, founded in 2018 by former NASA engineer Kyle Grant, uses ozone generation technology and delivery to clean laundry hygienically for both individuals and businesses (like hotels, air bnbs, colleges and offices). Most recently, they have been providing coronavirus (COVID-19) disinfection for customers, by combining 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 sterilize items, dissolvable laundry bags to eliminate coronavirus transmission through fabric and clothing.
Kyle Grant, CEO and co-founder, said, “We’ve developed a service in the last 2 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. ”
The startup is also now providing laundry services to the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine trial, as well as GP surgeries and vulnerable community members, including care homes. Dr Paul Ch’en GP Partner, of the Observatory Medical Practice, added: “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.”
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 the Founders Factory’s accelerator programme and founder Kyle Grant was recently selected as Forbes Europe’s 30 under 30.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
