Why a South Korean home-cleaning startup is going into pet sitting

In Korean, the word for pets is aewan dongmul (애완동물) – the first two characters are a prefix that usually means “prized article,”or something you possess or admire.

However, as more Koreans acquire pets and consider them as part of the family, the word, too, has evolved.

These days, they go by banryuh dongmul (반려동물), and the prefix banryuh (반려) stands for “a companion.”

Even as pets play an increasingly important role in people’s lives, it is near impossible to keep an eye on them around the clock, especially when we’re at work or on vacation. In Korea, where nearly half of all households have dual incomes, people are not home for the vast majority of time to take care of their pets.

Photo credit: Miso

Enter Miso, a South Korea-based home cleaning service that recently ventured into pet care services. It checks in on pets, gives them food and water (and medicine if need be), and takes them for walks around the neighborhood.

Founded in 2015, Miso operates in eight of the 10 largest cities in South Korea. The business is pretty straightforward, too. If you need your house to be cleaned three times a week, for example, the app can connect you with a service provider (Miso has worked with about 20,000 of them) and charge a corresponding fee.

Over the years, Miso also extended its services to air-conditioner and washing machine cleaning, all in an effort to earn more revenue from each user.

In less than four years, the startup has served 200,000 customers and delivered 1.3 million services valued at US$50 million. Funding-wise, Miso has raised over US$10.5 million in total, US$8 million of which during a series A round in September 2018.

Previous investors like Y Combinator and AddVenture participated in the latest round, along with new backers like Social Capital.

So, with some traction in the home-cleaning industry, why did the company move into pet care services?

According to Justin Kim, general manager of Miso’s pet services, the numbers check out. He says that one in five Koreans have pets, and the market’s compound annual growth rate is about 27%. This trend is not limited to Korea, though Miso has no plans to expand beyond the country at the moment.

According to a recent survey, the pet care market in Southeast Asia was valued at an estimated US$952 million in 2014 and is expected to reach US$1.4 billion by 2020. The demand for pet care in the region was spurred by a corresponding increase in pet ownership.

See: After selling his $200m startup to Alibaba, an entrepreneur’s back with a pet food venture

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