Yuichi Kamo, President and CEO of CaSy Co., Ltd.　

Business is born from the desire to love and help others.

President and CEO of CaSy Co., Ltd.　Yuichi Kamo　(Kamo Yuichi)

■ Profile
He obtained his CPA while studying at the School of Commerce at Waseda University. After graduating, he started his career at an auditing firm, then went on to study at the Globis Business School, before founding CaSy Inc., a housekeeping service, in 2014. In 2022, the company was listed on the Mothers market (now the Growth market).

"I want to help my pregnant wife." That was the idea behind CaSy, a company that operates a housekeeping platform. Leveraging IT technology to provide low-cost, hassle-free services, the company went public in 2022. We spoke with President Yuichi Kamo, who is filled with compassion for humanity, to find out more about his unique IT know-how, his devotion to his employees, and the measures he is taking to make housekeeping a commonplace option.

A dramatic change from a glamorous university life to hard days of studying and part-time work

During my first and second years of university, I enjoyed university life, participating in futsal club activities and going out for drinks. However, since I was in the Faculty of Commerce, there were many people around me who were passionate about studying to become an accountant, and the exam was quite difficult, so I wanted to take on the challenge myself. Also, my parents retired when I graduated from university, so I wanted to get a job with a decent salary. So, in the second half of my third year, I started studying to become an accountant at a vocational school. However, I also worked part-time at a convenience store late at night, so I was only getting one or two hours of sleep each night. This was the time when I studied the most. After studying for around 15 hours every day, I was able to pass the accountant exam in my fourth year.

"I want to make the people closest to me smile" - I came across a housekeeping service

After graduating, I got a job at an auditing firm. The number of job openings for accountants fluctuates depending on the season, but when I was job hunting, everywhere was welcoming. I also started attending the Graduate School of Management at Globis University to differentiate myself as an accountant. At the time, I became an accountant to increase my own income, but I became involved with many venture company presidents of my generation, and was inspired by people who had altruistic aspirations rather than just focusing on themselves. Part of my decision to go to Globis was to learn this spirit.
In the midst of all this, I wanted to create a service that could bring a smile to someone close to me. At the time, the person closest to me was my pregnant wife. At the time, I was doing the housework for her, but I wasn't very good at it, so it ended up causing her stress. So when I started using a housekeeping service, both my wife and I felt like we had more time to ourselves, and smiles were returning to our family. At the same time, I felt that "this service still has room for improvement and future potential," so I decided to develop it into a business.

The biggest drawbacks were the price and the hassle. By utilizing IT, we are making the service easy to use even for busy people!

The issues that concerned me about traditional housekeeping services were the price and the amount of work required. At the time, the going rate was 4,000 to 5,000 yen per hour, which was quite expensive for ongoing use. It also involved a lot of work: you had to call the call center to arrange a date and time, speak to a sales representative, and then be connected to a staff member. It took about two weeks from the time you called until you could start using the service. It felt like too much time for a service used by busy people. So, I wondered if we could apply the concepts of the sharing economy, which were just beginning to develop at the time, such as Mercari and Uber, to housekeeping services. By creating a system where customers could register online and staff would apply based on that information, we were able to reduce sales personnel costs and arrange staff in as little as three hours through online matching.

CaSy offers high quality and reliability of service at a low price

In order to improve the quality of our service, we are focusing a lot on increasing the engagement of our cast members (CaSy's housekeeping staff). Housekeeping work is basically done directly at work, but with the addition of the company, we have devised a system where employees from headquarters stamp the daily reports written by our cast members, and where cast members' ranks are raised based on customer service ratings, leading to higher hourly wages and changes in the color of their aprons, so that our cast members can feel their growth and contribution.
Furthermore, reliability is essential for housekeeping services. One of the reasons we listed our company on the stock exchange was to increase the company's credibility. Because the quality of our staff's service is also important in increasing that trust, we hold regular monthly study sessions called "CaSy Salons" to provide staff with opportunities for self-improvement, and we also have a system in place where staff who have received poor reviews from customers can attend training at headquarters to improve their skills. By acting as an intermediary, we improve the quality of our services, and by using IT to match customers, we are able to differentiate ourselves from other companies by reducing sales efforts and prices.

What I learned from my failures is the importance of loving your employees

While running the company, I once experienced about one-third of the employees quitting. It was around the time we were aiming to go public, and we were transitioning from a free corporate culture to one where we were trying to clarify the company's code of conduct. I also think that a factor in this was that I was focusing too much on shareholders rather than employees. After that experience, I decided that "I would put my employees first so that they could devote their full attention to our cast members and customers."

Our goal is to create a world where the option of "asking others" is the norm

Only about 2-3% of people in Japan currently use housekeeping services on a daily basis. I want to create a world where housekeeping services are a common option. To that end, I am creating a system for housekeeping services called "MoNiCa." This is aimed at small and medium-sized housekeeping companies that have not yet invested in IT, and is an attempt to unlock our strength in IT, bring about digital transformation of the entire industry, and create a world where services are easier to use. I expect it to be adopted by a wide range of companies in the future.

Message

The important thing is to love. In running my company, I have personally experienced the importance of getting people involved. The most important thing is to love the people you involve. I want to help them. I want to make them smile. In that way, act with a sense of altruism, thinking about how you can be of help to the important people in front of you. If you do that, I believe that when you enter society, you will become a person who can involve many people and bring big smiles to their faces.

Student Newspaper Online January 16, 2023 Interview by Misaki Otsuka, 4th year student at Tokai University