The latest company affected by this is The Kaodim Group, a Malaysia-based startup which includes offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, and Indonesia.
Rather than asking around desperately for recommendations when the air conditioner started leaking, Kaodim was a convenient platform to search for service provider profiles online which saw hundreds of thousands of users.
The services they provided also included plumbers, cleaners, interior designers, and more. Aiyo, now we all must start calling our aunties for their contacts again!
On 1 June 2022, their co-founder and CEO, Choong Fui Yu released a statement on their website directed to their customers, service providers, employees, investors, and partners stating “…we announce that from 1 July 2022, Kaodim and all its affiliate platforms will no longer be operational.”
Say it isn’t so!
Choong attributed the cause of their closure to COVID-19 as the statement further read: “Although our recent recovery has been strong, the last 2+ years have been incredibly challenging. The prolonged COVID lockdowns and their ‘knock on’ effects in the form of operational disruptions, labour shortages, and higher running costs (especially on the service provider side) have significantly impacted our business and the quality of service we are able to deliver.”
With the multiple lockdowns, we can imagine that must have been nearly impossible for their service providers to visit the homes or offices of their customers.
He went on to elaborate: “More recently, these challenges have compounded further with inflation and rising costs. This has affected customer demand, service provider fulfilment, margins, and in turn, our earnings.”
Update 2:57pm 2 June: The statement in question has since been taken down from their official blog, however the quotes were taken from the site.
We hope that our other favourite companies will be able to make it through this pandemic!
Image credit: techcrunch.com, kaodim.com, @aidasue, @dikbee, @fiza_aizzawa @kaodim