April 20, 2024

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HONG KONG -- South Korean housekeeping service platform operator Miso CEO Victor Ching said he aims to expand the firm’s presence overseas next year.

Established in 2015, Miso is a platform that allows customers to book quality home service including cleaning, moving and dog walking. It currently has provided more than 1.5 million services to around 150, 000 customers in Korea.

“We are looking at different countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong,” Ching told The Investor during an interview at startup conference RISE in Hong Kong. He also explained that during the conference he met with local companies for future partnerships.

“Through my experience as one of the founding members of YoGiYo, I have learned that working with local people who really understand the market is crucial. So we came here to meet with local firms.”

YoGiYo, which is the Korean arm of Berlin-based Delivery Hero, operates the second-biggest food delivery platform in Korea.

Before entering the overseas markets, he plans to focus on expanding business further in Korea this year. “I hope that when Koreans think of a housekeeping service provider, they think of Miso. Like when Koreans think of an e-commerce platform they think of Coupang and 11st,” he said.

In February, the startup launched two-three hour services, which did not exist in the Korean housekeeping market, for one-person households. The cleaners usually prefer to work at one house for more than four hours here due to the time they spend traveling from one house to another.

“Through our platform, which has a bigger scale compared to the conventional home service provider, we made it possible to provide shorter services by grouping our clients who live next to each other. We hope to provide housekeeping services like hotels,” he said.

He also emphasized that it is crucial to keep motivating the workers to provide quality services. “We ask our clients to evaluate workers based on three categories -- time that they work, their attitude and quality of work. And we provide incentives to workers based on the customer’s average review points,” he said.

Ching also shared his know-how of how he attracted investors as a startup. “One of the things that I learned from Y Combinator is that you have to make investors come to you. And you can do that by showing that many customers are using your services,” he said.

"After that, showing your clear vision is important.” He said by doing this he could successfully secure an additional $8 million investment from many existing investors including Y Combinator. The company has so far secured total funding of $10.7 million.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@herladcorp.com)