Liuliu is an app that provides pet owners with their own mobile community. It closed a tens of millions RMB (a few million USD) round of Series Pre-A financing recently, led by Shanghai based Huijin Capital, joined by Liuliu’s original angel investor, Buttonwood Capital. It is noteworthy that Alibaba also made strategic investments in Liuliu worth a few million RMB (about USD one million) in 2014.
Pet owners use this app for two purposes.
One is to connect with other owners and post photos of their cute pets. Users can search for other owners by pet species or by location, and follow the owners that interest them. For some users, Liuliu is also a digital photo album of their pet’s’ growth.
“One user even uploaded over 100 photos of her pet. She doesn’t do that in other social media platforms. At Liuliu, they get a much higher of sense of identity, ” said Zhang Fan, the founder of Liuliu,
The other purpose is more practical. This app is a platform where users post information about pet breeding, adoption, and about temporary care for pets. Pet owners therefore use online information for to solve their offline problems. According to Zhang Fan, in the future they will add new features to it, including pet healthcare and related e-commerce.
The community had attracted 1.1 million users, with daily and monthly active users making up 8% and 25% respectively of the total registered accounts.
This new round of financing will be used in market expansion and e-commerce business.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)