 |
Miso CEO Victor Ching / Courtesy of Miso |
By Park Hyong-ki
Victor Ching, an American serial entrepreneur based in Korea, saw two problems in the local home cleaning market.
The first problem was that the customers who wanted to get their houses or offices cleaned have to pay membership fees in addition to service fees before they can get the service.
The second was that there were not a lot of private cleaning companies that managed and controlled the quality of their services well.
As a busy 36-year-old single man, Ching, who said that cleaning was the last thing he wanted to do while resting at home, experienced these problems while trying to find and receive proper service.
So, he decided to create a platform to relieve these pains for customers such as himself, with no upfront membership fees or cash payments in envelops to cleaners after cleaning.
Also, through the use of data analysis technology, he wanted to control and improve the quality of cleaning services by constantly receiving customer feedback.
Thus was Miso born a year and a half ago, with a seed investment of $2.7 million from a group of local and global investors, including Y Combinator, Sazze Partners and Strong Ventures.
Miso means smile in Korean.
"I asked myself then why I have to pay membership fees to get my house cleaned, and how do they control the quality of their services?" Ching said in a recent interview at a cafe in Gangnam, Seoul.
"Using the skill sets I developed from my past startup experience, I wanted to create a home cleaning service that could be a win-win for both cleaners and customers, something like Uber in taxis."
The Miso platform has more than 4,000 cleaners working in areas such as Seoul, Incheon and Giheung in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.
They cleaned some 30,000 houses last year. Miso had sales of 1 billion won on average a month last year, Ching noted.
Miso takes 11 percent of the service fees, while the rest goes to its cleaners.
All customer transactions are done digitally with just a touch of a finger on its smartphone app, like Uber, the Miso founder said.
"I wanted to provide convenience, easy digital billing without customers having to go to a bank to get cash and pay for the cleaning service afterwards," Ching said.
"Also, we focused on providing cleaners with jobs they can do in convenient locations where they would not have to travel long distances. If they had to travel one hour for the job, they can be late, and that would upset the customers."
Miso seeks to go national and will expand to other metropolitan areas in Korea this year, with the aim of achieving 10 billion won in sales a month.
It also seeks to further develop its cleaning services similar to those offered by hotels.
"If you go on a vacation and stay at a hotel, you get pampered by a lot of the hotel's convenient services including cleaning every day. Why not at home?" Ching said. "Through technology, we can help fulfill that reality for customers."
To further expand its services at a faster pace, Miso is looking to begin its first round of fundraising this year.
"I would like an initial public offering in the long term for my investors, rather than sell (the company). I still have a long way to go," he said.
"This is my fourth startup. I would like to build something big that will make an impact."
Before Miso, Ching was one of the founders of Yogiyo, Korea's No. 2 food delivery platform.
He was also a co-founder of Spoqa, a mobile loyalty platform, and Chin Chin, a dating app.
![[INTERVIEW] Putin uses summit with NK leader to stop Seoul from helping Ukraine: expert](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/a943fc209add47cf8ea82d3a78faf9b3.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
