00:00In conjunction with International Women's Day 2026 and its global team Give2Gain,
00:06Niagawani speaks with a woman who built one of Malaysia's most recognizable service brands
00:13by giving something priceless back to family's time.
00:17Today, we explore how giving opportunities, support and smarter services
00:22can multiply gains for women, for households and for the economy.
00:26With the founder of Dobby Quinn, Nini Tan.
00:30Nini, thank you so much for being with us today.
00:33Good morning.
00:34This year's IWD team Give2Gain, I understand that Dobby Quinn was built on the idea of giving time back
00:42from seeing how laundry steals time from working women and families.
00:47How did that insight become a defensible business mode?
00:50And what made you realize this wasn't just a personal struggle, but a real business opportunity?
01:00Good morning and thank you for inviting me to share on Dobby Quinn's mission and vision in uplifting
01:08the quality of life of working female and also the families.
01:17So how did I realize that it's a defensible business mode?
01:21is that when I started working and I started having the experience of working
01:31and going back home to continue doing part of the household chores.
01:39So at that point, I was staying out and working in corporate.
01:44And I realized when I go back home instead, so nowadays a lot of us bring work home as well.
01:50So on top of doing that, during the supposedly break time, I was occupied with household chores,
01:58like cleaning up the floor, tidying up things, washing the clothes, drying the clothes, ironing,
02:05then folding it back up, buying food for making meals.
02:13And all those took up time that I could instead use the time to do self-development, learn more
02:22and continuously grow.
02:24And as I reflect, my mom was also a working mother and that is why she had less time to
02:35spend time with me and my siblings when we were younger.
02:38I was just always tired.
02:41So besides that, I looked into the statistics of Malaysian female and realized that every year
02:48there is a 0.5 to 1% increment in terms of the number of women coming out to participate
03:00in the work, in the working industry.
03:05So that paints a picture that whatever I was going through, it's not singular.
03:11It's not just me.
03:13It is the other females are also going through that.
03:18In fact, more and more females will be involved and in molding the economy,
03:23which means there will be less time for families at home, whether it is looking after the elderly
03:30parents or young children that actually need time, need nurturing time.
03:38And so that is where I realized that there's actually a gap.
03:44And I was also a self-service laundry user.
03:47At the same time, I felt there was a lot of struggle when it comes to the quality that
03:53I was experiencing at that moment in terms of the quality of detergent, quality of the dry
04:00and having to go back and forth between the laundry place and my makan hangout place.
04:08So that is where we make improvement in terms of the quality of the wash.
04:15And Dobie Queens dry don't need ironing.
04:18So that saves another two hours of ironing time.
04:21And know that this is really an opportunity that we can explore.
04:30And that's where we embarked on it.
04:34Nini, Dobie Queens grew from one outlet to, if I'm not mistaken, more than 80 now.
04:4080 nationwide.
04:42What's one challenge you face scaling as a woman founder?
04:47Is it like financing, credibility, hiring?
04:50And what did you learn that other women entrepreneurs should know?
04:55So as of now, we have more than 90, about 95.
04:59Oh, okay.
05:00Good.
05:01Oh, yeah.
05:02And what I learned about female entrepreneurs is that females naturally play the role of
05:18nurturing at home.
05:21So usually they are already taking on some form of care work, whether it is for the elder
05:30parents or for the siblings or for their children.
05:33So that itself, in Malay language, you call it the out of love kind of beban.
05:41And so when they want to take on the role of entrepreneurship, which comes with wearing a lot of different
05:49hats because you
05:50have different function, so it becomes lagi banyak.
05:54Yeah.
05:55So the learning is really number one, to assess personal capacity.
06:01And I always use time as a measurement.
06:05How much time am I spending on preparing meals, whether it's for myself or for my children or for my
06:13family?
06:14How much time am I putting in to help them with their studies?
06:19How much time am I putting in to clean the place, do arrangement of food?
06:24So do a time audit.
06:26When we do that time audit, that's where the first realization starts happening.
06:32We call it awareness.
06:35Then when we have the awareness, then let me put an example.
06:40If let's say every day on top of work, I'm taking three hours to do all this care work.
06:48Now every day, three hours means one week is 18 hours.
06:52Yeah.
06:53So with this one, my next step will be to get in help, to outsource some part.
06:58For example, can the teaching of or helping with school homework, because nowadays school homework is at a different level.
07:06So can we outsource this part to let the children join some tuition class?
07:15For caring of parents, can we get professional help or can we get help from other family members?
07:26When it comes to food, can there be other arrangements?
07:30Can we set up some auto-buying system, auto-replenishment for cleaning?
07:35Can we get external help or can we buy robots?
07:39I always encourage working females to buy robots.
07:42It's very affordable right now.
07:44Put it on.
07:46It's on Wi-Fi.
07:46When you're not at home, it will clean the place.
07:49It can mop.
07:49It can vacuum.
07:52So all these things we need to be able to, the first thing is to take time back, right?
07:57To know how much time we are using, spending on care work.
08:01Number two, how can we effectively take the time back?
08:05We may not be able to take back all the three hours, but if we can reduce it to only
08:10spending 30 minutes to do planning, review,
08:15and then we take back two and a half hours, that itself will help with giving us time to build
08:26the business,
08:26especially in the initial few years where it's a learning phase.
08:32business is still finding its product market fit.
08:38And the entrepreneur needs to grow very rapidly and needs to form the team, rally the team, and grow the
08:48team.
08:50So one of the mistakes that I find a lot of female entrepreneurs do is while building the business,
08:56they are still holding on to doing everything in their day-to-day routine.
09:01They still want to be sending their mother to the care center.
09:06They still want to be dropping their children off to the school.
09:09They still want to be cleaning the place.
09:12They still want to be cooking the special meals.
09:14So that is going to contribute to overcapacity and burnout.
09:19And they don't speak out to us for help.
09:23So they're still late.
09:25Nili, with about two minutes of our discussion,
09:29don't be curious to differentiate with investing in staff outlets,
09:33branded detergents that you mentioned, express delivery, pickup services,
09:38all costly decisions, choices that add cost.
09:41Where did giving more service still produce a positive ROI and adds value for customers,
09:49especially women?
09:50And where did you pull back?
09:52Right.
09:53So I would say we pull back in terms of laundry.
10:00We are not the most, the cheapest laundry.
10:05Yeah, so that is a form of, we know we may not be able to serve customers
10:11who are really tight on budget.
10:15Secondly, there's also a pullback when it comes to giving free Wi-Fi.
10:19We believe that our true customers, they are already having some form of unlimited data
10:27and they are also more time sensitive.
10:31So what they want is really convenience and quality.
10:35So we forego giving Wi-Fi, which is not a problem.
10:39We actually encourage customers to leave, drop off their laundry in Dobby Green
10:44and go out to do their, do the things they need to do.
10:49Drop their children off, cuci kereta, potong rambut, beli barang-marang rumah.
10:54So they are not going to be in a store.
10:56We will be the one doing everything for them.
10:58So those are things that we cut back on.
11:02We also cut back on electricity by using motion sensor, lights, and fans.
11:15So yes, we have made decisions to give more costly added service.
11:22And for example, the express delivery actually comes with an extra cost.
11:29One part is the delivery, another part is the manpower cost when it comes to folding the clothes.
11:35So folding clothes is very time consuming.
11:39So consumers actually take on the extra cost to have someone else fold their clothes for them
11:44so that they can just, you know, ambik balik masuk dalam amari dah siap.
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