Kaodim goes under, blames pandemic and rising costs

Kaodim, the marketplace platform for home services, has announced that it will be ceasing operations in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Philippines from 1 July 2022 onwards. This comes following a post by its co-founder and CEO Choong Fui Yu on its website.

According to Choong, Kaodim had struggled in the last two and a bit years, with Choong in particular blaming ‘prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns’ and the knock on effects it has had, such as operational disruptions, labour shortages and higher running costs. These all ended up hurting Kaodim’s business and the quality of services they offered. Choong also goes on to blame inflation and rising costs in more recent weeks, which caused dwindling customer demand, affected service provider fulfillment and ultimately hurt their margins and earnings.

As such, Choong says they can no longer grow the business meaningfully for the long term. Choong goes on to state that they will continue to provide all that they can in notice and severance payments to Kaodim’s employees.

“Against this backdrop, we reluctantly but consciously arrived at the difficult decision to cease operations. We feel strongly that this is the best way for us to honour our obligations to employees, by providing all we can in notice and severance payments.

In the same way, to our customers, service providers, investors and partners, we believe that ceasing operations, while painful, is better than having to compromise on the level of service that we have constantly strived for and delivered – and which has been the driver of our growth all this time,” – Choong Fui Yu, Kaodim CEO

While in Choong’s post it mentions that existing customers and vendors on Kaodim can check their FAQ section for more information on Kaodim ending its services, at time of writing it seems as though none of the linked FAQ pages work anymore. Their website also has a post under their ‘latest updates’ tab showing the FAQs about Kaodim ceasing operations but again, this leads to a dead link. However, as spotted by Lowyat before the FAQ page was taken down, Kaodim had stated that they will delete all user accounts and data under the company after 30 June 2022. Bookings made between customers and service providers for dates after Kaodim’s sunsetting will also no longer be managed by them.

Kaodim first launched in 2014 by Choong and Jeffri Cheong, both former lawyers. They had bold ambitions of becoming the ‘Uber for home services’, connecting together customers and service providers with their marketplace platform. The service would grow into becoming one of the leaders in the home services space across South East Asia, and was backed by a number of investors too. Kaodim would later go on to partner up with Grab to offer the ‘Clean and Fix’ feature on the Grab app in 2019.

If you’d like to read Choong’s statement in full regarding Kaodim ceasing operations, you can click here to head to their website.