Miso, a home cleaning online-to-offline (O2O) service startup in South Korea announced on February 27 about the official launch of its moving out cleaning service beginning this March.

Speaking on the launch, a spokesperson from Miso said, “We will improve the inconvenient reservation system and pricing structure based on our diverse know-hows and big data collected from previous housekeeping experience.”

Established in August 2015, Miso connects customers to high-quality housekeeping service using a simple reservation system. Starting this March, its platform has also begun to offer moving out cleaning services as due to the increased demand from customers.

Miso is founded by Haksu Lee who previously ran his own startup Anbado Video along with Victor Ching who was previously a CTO at Seoul-based food delivery startup Yogjyo before its acquisition by Delivery Hero in 2014. Their experience has influenced the buildup of Miso, engineering the platform development towards convenience.

“The Miso app allows users to easily reserve the time and date for hiring a cleaning service. We can predict cleaners’ schedules and assign jobs to them effectively avoiding the hassle for both housekeepers and users,” said a spokesperson of Miso.

On top of that, the pricing in the platform is made transparent and reasonable for both customers and professional housekeepers. For its recent launched moving out cleaning service, Miso will also offer special inspections and after-sale services for an entire day of moving out.

“Traditionally, businesses offer four or eight-hour services, but they charge you more for the same amount of time depending on the size of your house. I don’t really think that made a lot of sense because you’re still paying for four hours. Some of the pricing structures from other cleaning services look like a mini Excel spreadsheet.” says Miso’s CEO Ching.

“It’s a different pricing table if you want to have a load of laundry done or some kind of cleaning for your fridge. Everything needs an additional fee,” adds Lee. “It’s a big pain point for existing customers and we wanted to simplify it.”

South Korea’s home cleaning service market is worth US$5 billion and gradually increasing due to South Korea’s growth in dual-income households. Since 2005, spending on cleaning services has increased threefold. With 44% of all households being dual income, cleaning services will continue to be in high demand.

As of February 2017, Miso offers the moving out cleaning service in the three major cities of Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi-do, in addition to a standard package o 45,000 won (about US$40) for 4 hours of cleaning.

Miso CEO Victor Ching said, “Miso ensures that people like office workers and two-paycheck couples with busy lives enjoy the moving out cleaning service with its transparent pricing… moving out cleaning requires a lot of attention and effort, and we hope that our customers can live a comfortable and enjoyable live in their new homes, leaving the hard work to us, the professionals.”

With the average Korean home becoming smaller, Miso plans to offer shorter services so that users can pay less and have their homes cleaned more frequently. Miso will also continue to improve the quality of its own customer review analysis algorithm.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media