Online celebrity driven e-commerce app Xiaohongchun, literally meaning “little red lips”, announced a USD 63.84 M Series C financing, Chinese tech blog Pedaily.cn reported on Friday. The financing was sourced from Huace Film & TV, a listed media group.
Investors such as BlueRun Ventures and GGV Capital, participated in its previous three rounds of financing.
Unusually for China’s tech scene, the company is based in Chongqing, in South-Central China.
Launched in 2015, the app is both a female lifestyle community and an e-commerce platform. Its users, mostly aged 18-30, can watch videos that demonstrate make-up, ways to wear clothes, fitness, and so on. Meanwhile, they can buy things recommended in the videos directly via the app.
The app said that comparing to normal shopping apps, many girls prefer apps that enable them to shop and to watch demonstration videos.
The startup encourages its users to produce demonstration videos as well. Every month, it rewards 80 demonstrators who are the most watched. Currently, the app claims it has 2000 demonstrators and a few millions of videos.
The app, partnering with manufacturers and cosmetics brands, operates its e-commerce business in a business-to-consumer (B2C) way. Beauty and skincare products account for 80% of total sales.
So far, the app has been downloaded 12 million times, with 500,000 daily active users, according to company data.
(Top photo from Baidu Images)