Car wash business · India
Start a car wash business
About ₹15 lakh to open a bay, and about ₹1,11,000 a month once it is running.\* Here is what it takes, what it costs, and what it earns.
to open, everything included
cars a day, the working assumption
profit a month
to get your money back
\*At 25 cars a day and a ₹300–400 wash in a city. Income ₹3,35,000, running cost ₹2,24,000. Your own profit depends on your location, your rent and your wages — these are planning figures, not a promise.
Talk to us
Tell us where you want to open
Send your city and we will come back with pricing, the bay layout and the nearest dealer. Prefer to chat? The same details go straight to our WhatsApp.
Step 1
What you need on site
Check these before anything else. Most sites that fail, fail on one of them.
Space
A bay 8.0 m × 3.5 m and 3.0 m high — about 26 × 11.5 × 10 ft. Plus a pump room of roughly 1 × 2 m, depending on the site.
Water
100 to 150 litres for each car. Keep a 10,000 litre tank — that is one tanker load.
Power
380 to 415 V, three phase. The sanctioned load usually has to be raised, and that charge is monthly, not one-off.
Drain
A pit and an oil separator, so no oil reaches the drain. Sized to your local rules.
Manpower
Two or three people. One runs the machine; the others bring cars in and finish them.
The machine
A KKE ArrowClean Base washes 8 to 10 cars an hour without brushes. Nothing touches the paint.
Step 2
Where the ₹15 lakh goes
The machine is about half of it. The rest is the site — and that is the part most plans forget.
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| KKE ArrowClean Base machine | ₹8,00,000 |
| Civil work, drainage, oil separator | ₹1,50,000 |
| Water tank, softener, pump | ₹1,20,000 |
| Electrical — 3 phase connection, panel | ₹1,00,000 |
| Shed, signage, branding | ₹1,20,000 |
| Vacuum, compressor, tools | ₹80,000 |
| Deposits, chemicals, launch marketing | ₹1,30,000 |
| Total investment | ₹15,00,000 |
Indicative, before GST, transport and fitting. A Mudra loan or an MSME equipment loan covers most of it — a ₹10 lakh loan over 5 years is an EMI of about ₹22,000 to ₹25,000. Several state schemes also offer a subsidy on the machine.
Step 3
Open where people already wait
A mall, a school, a hospital, a shopping complex or a highway stop. People are waiting anyway, so they wash the car while they wait. The car must be able to turn in from the road without a three-point turn, and passers-by must be able to see the wash happening — foam and lights bring in customers, which is advertising you do not have to pay for.
Questions we get every week
How many cars a day do I need?
Twenty to thirty a day is where an automatic bay starts to work. Below about eighteen, the wash needs to be supporting another business — a workshop, a fleet yard, a used-car lot — rather than standing on its own.
How long does one wash take?
About five minutes, against thirty to forty by hand. That is where the extra cars a day come from.
How many people do I need?
One person can run the machine. You still need one or two more to bring cars in, finish them and look after customers — the bay runs on a fraction of the manpower a hand wash needs, not on nobody.
Can I get a loan or a subsidy?
A Mudra loan or an MSME equipment loan covers most of the investment, and several state schemes offer a subsidy on the machine. Ask your bank — we can supply the quotation and specification they will want.
Do brushes damage paint?
The ArrowClean has no brushes at all — foam, chemistry and water do the work. On our brush machines the brushes are closed-cell soft foam, which does not hold grit. Brush or touch-free is a question of what suits your site, not of quality.
Send us your city and we will do the rest
Pricing, a bay layout for your plot and the nearest dealer — usually the same day.