On-demand cleaning startups are growing in number, but it’s a tough niche to crack. Photo credit: Paylessimages / 123RF.
While America’s Handy, an app for booking cleaners, is pulling in tens of millions in venture capital funding, South Korea’s WaHome is attracting more modest sums of cash for its own service. WaHome today announced a round of seed funding worth US$1.5 million led by 500 Startups.
It adds to the US$1 million that WaHome got in November.
The startup, which operates only in Korea’s capital, Seoul, has so far “fulfilled over 30,000 transactions” since its launch July last year, which works out at just over 500 cleaning jobs per week in a ram-packed metropolis of 10 million people.
WaHome has signed up actor Bae Yong-joon (center) to give the startup some celebrity clout. He appeals to the app’s “target demographic of women aged 35 to 60,” explains co-founder Edward Hahn (left) to Tech in Asia. Fellow founder and co-CEO John Lee is on the right. Photo credit: WaHome.
As co-founders John Lee and Edward Hahn explained to us earlier this year, the startup has a few local rivals in the on-demand housekeeping space, so it’s focusing on quality of service and speed of bookings to win over customers from other apps and to persuade people to quit using brick-and-mortar agencies.
The backing of 500 Startups means a vote of confidence for the Korean crew from a well-respected Silicon Valley VC – and it counters arch-rival Miso, which was recently inducted into the revered Y Combinator.
As shown by the expensive failure of US-based Homejoy, it’s a perilous market where it’s difficult to retain cleaners and rope in repeat customers.
The other investors in WaHome’s newest round are Daesung Private Equity, ES Investor, and Nexon co-founder Kim Sangbum.
Editing by Judith Balea and Osman Husain
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