Namita Tripathi, an amiable and strong woman entrepreneur of today, is a name you will immediately associate with the White Cloud Laundry service in Goa. She is running this proprietorship across the state all by herself, with meticulousness and diligence. Namita comes across as a confident, courageous and determined woman who is ready to conquer the world. She sets a perfect example of a businesswoman, a daughter, a wife, and a mother combined into one person. With support from her family and friends, she started her venture with a simple idea of quality laundry service 18 years ago and has come a long way since. Today we share her empowering and inspiring journey from a simple housewife to an enterprise brand.
Namita, originally from Mumbai, moved to Goa with her husband 2 kids, 26 years ago. At that time, Goa painted a drastically different picture of what people see today. When she moved here, her focus was primarily on taking care of her family with her newborn grasping most of her attention. Belonging to a simple Marathi family, and a graduate from Mumbai University, she was taught that a woman should never limit herself to just taking care of the family. She has been brought up with the belief that a woman is capable of doing much more than she’s framed into doing. Hence moving with life in a new city, Namita always knew that she would not remain behind closed doors and step out to conquer greater heights. Her husband Deepak Tripathi supported her at every step, and she was able to attend to her two growing-up sons – Chirag Tripathi and Ujjwal Tripathi. Namita’s entire family encouraged her all the way in fulfilling her entrepreneur mission.
Bringing White Cloud into the world
While scouting for various services like a cleaner, laundry, and others, she observed that there were hardly any service or even locals providing these laundry cleaning at discretion as in the metro cities. Considering this as a significant hurdle in completing her many household chores, she happened to get the idea of starting a laundry service, something which was completely missing in the Goan market. So after much planning and support from her husband, she opened the flagship store of White Cloud Laundry in Panjim in the year 2000. Overcoming most of the challenges while setting up the business, Namita started with one vision in mind – to provide timely, trustful and quality service to people. Since then there has been no stopping.
With this intention, White Cloud gained momentum and Namita was able to open a second store in Porvorim within a span of one year. Continuing the same vision and aim in mind and increasing demand for laundry services, Namita gradually opened her third store in Mapusa in the year 2002. Today she is a proud owner of total 6 White Cloud laundry service outlets, running successfully at Calangute, Vasco, and Margao.
Apart from catering to individuals, the store also provides its services to many premium hotels in Goa. Namita adds, “Serving hotels require more proficiency as the order is large, and has to be an on-time delivery. I have a skilled and dedicated staff that works around the clock for such orders and delivers every day in the morning at the promised time. Considering the criticality of the job and the client of such high repute, we ensure that nothing goes out to them unfinished.” The retail also tends to the guests staying in these hotels who request for special laundry services. For them, the delivery time is same day, without fail.
Kissing success with a ‘clean’ heart
White Cloud laundry provides services which include washing, dry cleaning, ironing, and roll-press of all clothing and fabrics. Namita shared with profound happiness that most of the White Cloud customers are a repeat and loyal customers, as they have been using the services for many years. It is Namita’s great positivity and enthusiasm and inclination towards excellent customer service that she has been able to create a niche brand for herself. White Cloud has been able to establish itself as a quality-led service brand because of the transparency and superior services it renders to its clientele. Namita ensures that her entire staff at all outlets give the best customer service, by understanding their requirements clearly and abiding by delivery time. Namita believes that customer satisfaction and happiness is the key to success.
She shared, “I have been blessed with a great family and circle of friends who have always stood by me. My husband is a pillar of support and helped me manage and set-up my business. My staff too, who have been with me for many years; they are the real reason for my success. It is because of this self-sustaining and healthy ecosystem that real reason for a steady and stable growth year on year.” She also added, “It has not always been smooth sailing. There were many high tides and low-tides in this journey that have been a catalyst in making me the person I am today.”
With the determination and the vision in focus, Namita works with a single aim – to help the people with clean and crisp laundry, pulling them out of daily rigour of cleaning and ironing clothes. The brand and the logo itself stands synonymous to a white, clean laundry against the sunny-blue sky. And she aims to continue to maintain the quality standards all throughout.
Empowering the way to ‘brighter’ future
As a businesswoman, Namita never restricted herself with just minting money. That is not at all her agenda. Her beliefs about societal benefits also hold firmly in her determination. She has employed many locals in her retail and has trained them from scratch. She has hired many local women as staff and coached them with customer management skills. Namita sets an example of a self-believing and an enduring woman who had the vision to make her life meaningful and also reciprocate the same to the society. Today she is an inspiration to many women in the state, encouraging to come out of their cocoons and growing wings to fly because they can. She says, “Women are excellent at multitasking and management. Just see them handle their homes, and you will learn for free for what many pay lakhs for training in MBA courses. The only thing women need is encouragement and support from her family. So they can achieve anything they dream of becoming.” Namita has employed many locals, mainly women as they are good with customer management and some of the behind the curtain services. For handling heavy machinery, she has a staff of dedicated men who do a perfect time-bound work for clean laundry to be ready for delivery. She has also helped many of her staff, who have succeeded so well at the White Cloud that they moved ahead and set up their cleaning service.
White Cloud Laundry Service today is a household name. Ask your family, they would tell you from where your clean laundry came. The ease and effort of getting clean clothes to wear every morning while getting ready for work is all courtesy of White Cloud. So tomorrow, when you are visiting any of the White Cloud stores, you will know the real face behind it, the hard work and struggle that has gone into setting it up and giving quality cleaning services every day. Namita does have plans to expand to outer boundaries of Goa as well. But right now she is completely focused on the existing business and would start her expansion plans soon.
