Like many Hong Kongers, Kelvin Lee worked long days in the office.
The long hours kept him away from home for long stretches of time, so much that everyday necessities would often go neglected – including his laundry, which, left untouched for weeks due to laundromats closing long before he could make it home from work, would pile up.
Such was the frustration that would lead Kelvin and Elaine, in 2015, to start BONI. http://www.boni.com.hk
BONI takes away the inconvenience of having to think about laundry while working long hours by offloading the chore from users. It lets them select their preferred service – which includes washing and folding, dry cleaning, and even household dry cleaning and shoe care – and select their preferred pick-up and delivery date and time. With BONI, users no longer needed to fret about laundromat closing hours.
A simple idea that catered to a real need among Hong Kongers, BONI had every potential to succeed. Like many startups however, it wasn’t long before BONI started flailing through their success, challenged by the need to scale and keep up with customer demand.
To sustain their business and grow in profitability, they needed to transform the business model and user experience.
“BONI does not use any buzz words. No AI, no blockchain.” Instead, what BONI demonstrates is genuine market knowledge and empathy of customers. “They worked in laundromats, they worked as drivers, they picked up and dropped off laundry to customers and listened to customers directly – that’s empathy,” said Kai Tsang, co-founder of White Knight Group.
“This is why,” he said, “we invested in BONI.”
Through a specially tailored transformation programme incorporating the design thinking methodology – involving empathising (with customers), defining (the problems and challenges), ideating (solutions), prototyping (the aforementioned solutions), testing the prototype, and then once again defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, and so forth – White Knight helped BONI with a number of challenges, including logistics, resources management, and business and financial modelling and planning. They also helped redesign and redevelop the BONI app for better user experience and engagement. Latest Technology likes Siri Shortcut was also implemented further simplifying the laundry process for iPhone users.
Such was the transformation of the BONI mobile app that, not long after, the Apple App Store in Hong Kong named it one of the “New Apps We Love” and gained the love from customers with 5 star rating. Revenue tripled for BONI, and revenue growth is further projected to grow sixfold. With White Knight’s help, BONI is also planning to raise next round of funding to be able to penetrate the HKD30-billion market in Hong Kong, followed by a regional expansion.
Today, BONI continues its design thinking-led transformation programme with White Knight. Nonetheless, thanks to the programme, BONI is certainly getting to live the fullness of its name, drawn from the Cantonese of ‘help you’ – and for even more Hong Kongers, at that.
About White Knight Group
White Knight Group is a revolutionary investor dedicated to partnering with startups and helping them succeed. Get in touch with the White Knight Group at whiteknight.asia.