Korea laundry start-up gets $36m Series C

It follows a KRW 50bn Series B bridge investment last year from SoftBank Ventures, Altos, Korea Development Bank, DS Asset Management, and Samsung Venture investment.

An initial KRW 17bn in Series B came in 2020 from Altos, DS, Samsung, Korea Investment Partners, Aju IB Investment, KT Investment, and Hana Ventures. A KRW 6.5bn Series A was raised in 2019, two months after launch.

As of the bridge round, the company was said to be growing at 15% a month. Its post-money valuation for the Series C is KRW 350bn, up from KRW 150bn at the time of the bridge round, according to TechCrunch.

Laundrygo was founded by serial entrepreneur Sung-woo Cho, who  set up Baemin Fresh, a next-day food delivery app that was integrated into Woowa Brothers’ Baedal Minjok service in 2015. Cho also acts as CEO of Laundrygo.

The core offering is a mobile app laundry and dry cleaning service that allows customers to pick up and drop off clothes within 24 hours. This is augmented by a network of 24-hour laundromats, a hotel laundry service, and a clothing alterations service.

Discounts are offered to customers who pay a monthly subscription. Artificial intelligence is said to be used in the screening and sorting of items, as well as laundry collection boxes. Operations are currently limited to Korea, but overseas expansion is considered feasible.

“Once we get another centre done then we will have to see if we can scale this across Korea,” Han Kim, a managing director at Altos told AVCJ in 2020 after the Series B. “I’m guessing non-Korean cities may be two or three years from now because we don't know if the model will work.”

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Consumer
• Technology
• Expansion
• South Korea
• H&Q Asia Pacific
• SoftBank Ventures Asia
• Altos Ventures
• TMT