Malaysia-based home services platform Kaodim will cease operations starting from July 1, citing prolonged COVID lockdowns among the challenges it faced.
“So it is with a heavy heart that we announce that from July 1, 2022, Kaodim and all its affiliate platforms will no longer be operational,” its Co-Founder and Chief Executive Choong Fui Yy wrote in a note on Wednesday.
“Although our recent recovery has been strong, the last 2+ years have been incredibly challenging,” he said.
The prolonged COVID lockdowns and their “knock on” effects in the form of operational disruptions, labor shortages and higher running costs (especially on the service provider side) have significantly impacted its business and the quality of service, he added.
“More recently, these challenges have compounded further with inflation and rising costs. This has affected customer demand, service provider fulfillment, margins and in turn, our earnings. Ultimately, we feel that we can no longer grow the business meaningfully for the long term, in line with our mission and ambitions,” Choong said.
“Against this backdrop, we reluctantly but consciously arrived at the difficult decision to cease operations,” he said. “We did not come to this conclusion lightly. Indeed, we considered and exhausted all options that were available to us.”
Founded in 2014, Kaodim.com said it is a web and mobile platform that provides an easy and dependable way for people to hire service providers whether it is a plumber, a hairstylist or a wedding photographer. Besides Malaysia, the company has operations in Singapore (Kaodim.sg), the Philippines (Gawin.ph) and Indonesia (Beres.id).
The services marketplace is also said to be a model similar to Thumbtack in the US. Other similar platform includes ServisHero and recommend.my.
According to data platform Crunchbase, Kaodim has raised a total of $17.6 million. The platform counts Square Peg Capital, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Venturra Capital, 500 Startups (now 500 Southeast Asia), East Ventures as backers.