Born out of China’s online classifieds giant 58.com, and with recent financial support from Alibaba, 58 Daojia is uniquely positioned make big inroads into China’s red-hot O2O field. It is now a sought-after partner for smaller players in the sector.
Wednesday, 58 Daojia tied the knot with Dudu Meijia, or Dudu Manicure in English, for an undisclosed amount, tech media outlet 36Kr reports.
According to the announcement, Dudu Meijia is to remain an independent operation after the merger. Both parties are to integrate their resources in manicure services.
Dudu Meijia, an on-demand manicure service provider, was initially introduced in Shanghai in June 2014. It snagged tens of millions of dollars in an October round of Series A financing from Sequoia Capital and Source Code Capital and, within half a year, was rolled out to six more cities including Beijing, Chengdu and Guangzhou.
Founded in September 2014, 58 Daojia is a multi-category service provider, including home cleaning, beauty care, moving, nanny and maternity matron services, and is now available in 28 Chinese cities. Last October, it landed USD 300 million in Series A financing from Alibaba, KKR and Ping An Ventures.
Besides facilitating self-run businesses, 58 Daojia started a “platform” strategy last April. To lead the market as a huge player, it plans to cooperate with third-party O2O service providers in different vertical markets and host them on its own platform.
Last October, the company partnered with the Shanghai-based on-demand laundry and flower delivery platform, 24Tidy, making laundry service available for its users.
After this merger, 58 Daojia will occupy more market share in the on-demand beauty service market, rivaling the other prominent player in the sector, Helijia, which completed Series C financing of USD 50 million last February.
With this in mind, 2016 will be a challenging year for the over-crowded on-demand beauty service sector. According to 36 Kr, there are thousands of such beauty care apps in China including manicure, pedicure, hairdressing and makeup services.
In this huge online-to-offline market, BATs and other tech giants including Meituan-Dianping and JD.com are all speeding up O2O business expansion which circles around industries like retail, food delivery and customer service.
(Top photo from http://www.ouquan.cn)