T

he households of Greater Jakarta are increasingly deciding against keeping a domestic worker, motivated by reasons including scarcity of reliable workers, having no space to accommodate a maid or preferring greater privacy at home.

Several companies have begun tapping this growing market by providing a professional cleaning service for households, which is more expensive but touted by providers as hassle-free.

Players in the field include tukangbersih.com, bersihrapih.com, Klining Kliling and Superklin.

The companies promote the benefits of their services compared with keeping a housemaid, saying that clients do not have to worry about security or dealing with '€œproblem'€ housemaids.

Sapulidi Professional House Cleaning Services, for example, advertises its services by expounding the advantages of hiring its temporary cleaners instead of housing a live-in domestic worker.

'€œHiring a housemaid does not give you service continuity nor a security guarantee,'€ the company claims.

On its website tujuhsapulidi.com, Sapulidi also highlights the '€œdisadvantages'€ of hiring a live-in housemaid, from having to live with someone who is '€œconstantly on the phone or in front of the TV'€ to constantly being asked to lend money, referred to colloquially as kasbon.

Despite failing to offer services such as cooking, taking care of pets or children or gardening, Sapulidi is confident that demand for its services will grow.

'€œWe learn that most people hire domestic workers just to clean, which gives the workers free time to be spent in front of television or hanging out with other housekeepers,'€ Sapulidi founder Mohamad Rizali Noor told The Jakarta Post recently.

In May 2014 Rizali and his wife Nanda Hayuningtyas established the company and hired a number of hospitality school graduates as their employees in a bid to provide a '€œstarred-hotels cleaning service'€ to their customers.

For one-off cleaning, Sapulidi charges Rp 450,000 (US$30.74) for a four-hour session and Rp 850,000 for an eight-hour session. They also provide monthly packages between Rp 800,000 and Rp 1,600,000 for four to 12 cleaning sessions.

Tukangbersih.com, meanwhile, offers packages from Rp 990,000 to Rp 2.99 million for regular cleaning, depending on the size of the house.

According to Rizali, Sapulidi has a wide range of clients ranging from expatriates to public figures and lawmakers, almost all of them affluent households.

One interesting thing he had noted, he said, was that a lot of his firm'€™s clients also employed domestic workers for general cleaning tasks.

'€œSome of our clients need our service a to clean one particular spot such as library or children'€™s room,'€ he said.

Having worked as a career diplomat since 2009, Rizali has visited many places and seen how cleaning service businesses have their own market in both developed and developing countries. As home cleaning is not yet a widespread in service in Jakarta, he decided to become one of the first players in the field.

To date, the business, which is managed by Nanda, has 15 employees who work between Monday and Saturday. The firm provides cleaning equipment as well as cleaners.

'€œThat'€™s what we try do here '€” we send trustworthy cleaners with our own tools and cleaning liquids to our clients'€™ house. Then they do the cleaning based on the clients'€™ priorities,'€ Nanda said.

Before being hired by Sapulidi, 28-year-old Heru Apriono worked in a number of hotels after obtaining a diploma degree in hospitality and tourism. Nine months ago, he decided to leave his job at Sultan Hotel in South Jakarta and joined the startup company.

Each of the cleaning services also offers specialized services like cleaning crystal light fittings, couches, mattresses, carpets and water tanks.