Beijing-based Duoxi, an O2O laundry service provider, received RMB 45 million (USD 6.9 million) in Series A financing just two months after it merged with Yunxiyi, another O2O laundry service provider, Chinese tech news site iyiou.com reported on Monday.
This round of funding was led by Qifu Capital, which focuses on TMT, modern services and new materials, and followed by Newsion Venture Capital, Duoxi’s angel investor.
Last December, Duoxi announced that it landed about RMB 10 million in Pre-A series financing from Shengjing FOF, which has also invested in many American venture capital companies including Menlo Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and 500 Startups. Yuan Ze, founder of Duoxi, disclosed that some new investors would inject Series B fundraising.
This round of funding will be used to develop and further scale business operations in more markets. “We will further improve our supply chains, marketing and brand promotion so as to bring customers a new laundry service experience,” Yuan said.
Duoxi provides standardized door-to-door laundry service after they receive orders online. Duoxi claims that they charge less than traditional lanudry services. It aims to realize automatic machine operation using less manual labor in the near future.
Duoxi’s online business launched last December and covers three first-tier cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjing. It has reached about 100 million orders per day, providing cleaning services for clothes, shoes, furniture and homes. Duoxi will expand its business to more fields, including the cleaning and maintenance of leather products in 2016. Its users will reach over 700，000.
The O2O laundry service business is mushrooming in China. According to Beijing Business Today, the laundry service business reached RMB 8,000 million last year and will reach over RMB 10,000 million this year. Some notable players in the Chinese O2O laundry service business including Duoxi, eDaixi and Tidy are thriving, but no one has become a unicorn yet.
Beijing-based eDaixi’s O2O laundry service rose in the O2O laundry business in 2015. It fundraised USD 100 million in a round of Series B financing led by Baidu in August and USD 20 million in angel financing from Tencent last year.