Housekeep's 8th birthday

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Housekeep's 8th birthday

Today’s our 8th birthday 🎂

That might sound super young. But business years don’t quite work like human years. After all, 50% of startups fail in their first five years – and the majority certainly don’t make it to eight years.

But those that do are in a particularly exciting phase. They've navigated many of the hurdles that new businesses face and they're in the fast-growth stage. But they're still learning, still curious and still have plenty of room to grow.

 

Our first 8 years – in a nutshell

When we launched in 2014, the home cleaning industry wasn’t working. Sure, you might find a good cleaner - if you got lucky through a neighbour or a local website. You could get your house cleaned – but you had to remember to get cash out and trust a stranger with your keys. And cleaners could find work – but they had to travel all over the place and hope they’d get paid on time.

Over the last 8 years we’ve grown into the UK’s leading home cleaning service – combining smart tech with even smarter people to deliver housework that actually, finally, works. 

We’ve completed 1.5 million cleans, with an average rating of 4.9* out of 5. We’ve saved cleaners over £6m in travel costs and increased cleaner earnings by 50%. And our tech’s saving 1000 tonnes of CO2 each year. That’s cleaning done better.

Highlights from the last year

The last year has been a particularly exciting one – we’ve opened new services and gone to new towns & cities. We’ve launched in Brighton, Luton, St Albans, Eastbourne & Slough – bringing our 5* cleaning service to areas outside the M25 for the very first time.

Alongside new towns and cities, we’ve also launched new services. When we celebrated our 7th birthday, we’d just launched our first tradespeople services – which included plumbers, electricians & handypeople and a few others. Since then, we’ve started offering a range of new services – including gardeners, removals, appliance engineers, waste removal, locksmiths, drainage specialists and gas & heating engineers. One step closer to ‘owning the home’ and becoming the go-to service for all cleaning & home services.

We’ve continued working closely with cleaners to improve their experience – helping them find more work, travel less and get paid on-time, every time. In November 2021, we increased Housekeeper pay across the board to ensure that Housekeep cleaners continue to earn more than any other cleaners.

We’ve added a bunch of award trophies to our cabinet over the last year. We’ve been named Tech Company of the Year  at the UK Business Tech Awards, and won the Transformation Through Technology Award at the Global Business Tech Awards. Plus we won both the Trade Award and the Technology Innovation Award at the Local Business Awards, as well as Service Based Business of the Year at the Good Web Guide Awards. 

Our CEO & Founder, Avin Rabheru, was named on the Top 100 Asian Stars in UK Tech for the third time, as well as featuring on the inaugural SME Leaders 20 list. And in January 2022, Avin was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours list – for services to entrepreneurship and digital innovation in the cleaning industry.

But perhaps most excitingly, we introduced our clean, new look back in November. Our new ‘Housework that works’ identity reflects the 5-star service provided by the professionals we work with, plus the smart tech that helps customers manage every part of the process seamlessly - from click, to clean, to cashless payment. Alongside our new branding, we launched our first mobile app for customers – making it even easier for customers to manage their bookings on-the-go.

And we’ve got plenty in the pipeline 

We’ve already got big plans for our ninth year. We’re targeting new towns, cities & services, in a bid to ‘own the home’ and become the UK’s trusted provider for all household chores. 

Stay tuned for more updates coming soon.

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