Miso head Victor Ching is aiming to duplicate his app’s success in house cleansing to brush up new enterprise at house and abroad.
Over the previous seven years, Victor Ching has carved out a distinct segment within the house cleansing house in South Korea with an app referred to as Miso. Although it’s a comparatively small market in comparison with on-line funds or meals supply, the app, which connects cleaners with shoppers, is the class chief within the nation by customers.
Miso, which implies “smile” in Korean, has dealt with greater than 5 million bookings since its founding in 2015. Of these, nearly 90% have come from repeat clients, the Seoul-based firm says. High startup buyers together with Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and Los Angeles-based Sturdy Ventures have backed Miso, which has raised over $11 million up to now.
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After years of regular progress in South Korea’s house cleansing market, cofounder and CEO Ching is taking Miso to the following stage. He’s aiming to duplicate Miso’s success with the 70 different companies it now presents and make its first transfer abroad. To assist gasoline its growth, Miso is making ready to lift $30 million in contemporary funding this yr.
“We’re targeted on constructing a platform that makes reserving companies as simple as shopping for a product on-line,” says Ching, 41, in a video interview from his workplace in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam neighborhood in late Might. Miso, which made the inaugural 100 to Watch listing final yr, goals to be the Amazon of house companies. “Increasing choice is essential in e-commerce,” he says, pointing to the success of billionaire Jeff Bezos’ firm. “We really feel the identical factor is essential in companies since you don’t want many companies repetitively.”
By way of its app, Miso presents common companies, reminiscent of house cleansing, laundry and pet sitting, to occasional jobs like repairs, shifting and inside reworking. The corporate says it has greater than 500,000 paying clients and over 50,000 service suppliers on its platform. “You would possibly want all kinds of various companies in a yr, so we really feel like one of the best expertise we are able to present for our clients is to supply a one-stop store the place you open the Miso app and we get it accomplished,” Ching says.
Supply: Miso
Miso has seen its gross sales soar because it started including to its suite of house companies in September 2020. Ching declined to provide particular income figures, however shared that gross bookings nearly tripled to over $128 million final yr from about $47 million in 2020. He expects additional acceleration if Miso’s one-stop store plan continues to work. “You’ve got this large companies market the place you have got billions of {dollars} in transactions, after which you’ll be able to add a funds layer on prime of that,” Ching says. “So there’s large potential for what we are able to do sooner or later.”
Whereas Ching’s plan for an omnibus house companies platform is formidable, John Nahm, cofounder and managing accomplice of Sturdy Ventures, is assured in him. “Identical to many nice founders, Victor may be very data-driven,” says Nahm, whose agency has invested within the likes of secondhand market unicorn Danggeun Market and cryptocurrency change Korbit. “He’s very meticulous in his strategy to new companies. He offers it a attempt, does a fast experiment after which, if the info exhibits that this will work, he goes all in,” says Nahm.
“As house companies are extremely native, we want to work with present corporations and founders within the native ecosystem.”
Earlier than beginning Miso, Ching cofounded a courting app referred to as Chinchin in 2014 that failed after practically two years. “Discovered vital lesson that exterior validation from buyers and/or press is nugatory,” Ching wrote on LinkedIn concerning the expertise. “All that issues is that clients love your product.” Previous to that, Ching, who grew up in Hawaii and studied enterprise on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was chief product officer and worker No. 2 at food-delivery app Yogiyo.
Miso plans to make use of its collection B spherical to gasoline its progress. “Our core platform is working and positively main funding would assist speed up that,” says Ching, including the spherical is anticipated to be accomplished this summer time. Its final fundraising was in 2018, when it secured $8 million from Sturdy Ventures and Y Combinator in addition to AddVenture, a house services-focused enterprise capital agency, and enterprise capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social Capital. Ching says Miso will ultimately go public, however presently has no concrete plans to take action.
Ching, whose mom is Korean and father is Chinese language, has large plans for worldwide growth, and is presently Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam. As an alternative of merely launching Chinese language or Bahasa Indonesian-language variations of Miso, Ching prefers to accomplice with established native home-service suppliers, for instance by sharing its platform and know-how. “Once we make the last word resolution to enter a brand new market, it’ll be working with an area accomplice who’s already in that house,” Ching says, including that he has met with just a few suppliers however has but to strike a deal. “As house companies are extremely native, we want to work with present corporations and founders within the native ecosystem.”
On the identical time, Ching is cautious to not rush Miso’s growth and fundraising. “We’re rising shortly whereas being cash-flow optimistic and like being answerable for our personal future,” he says. What’s distinctive about Miso, Nahm notes, is that whereas different profitable Korean startups have benchmarked themselves towards prime world gamers, Miso is poised to turn into a worldwide trailblazer in its personal proper.
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