Writer: Huang Xuejiao
In China, the change to the one-child policy to allow a second child greatly benefits the maternity and baby industry. According to the projections of Huatai Securities, the number of newborns in China is expected to exceed 20 million in 2018, and the market corresponding to this is estimated to be around 120 – 160 billion Yuan ($18.1 billion-$24.2 billion) per year. Meanwhile, new moms and dads rely on books, the Internet, and KOL advice for information on how to raise their kids.
Kr-Asia recently learned that the audio sharing platform Qi Meng Ting Ting (启蒙听听 QMTT) has obtained tens of millions yuan in Pre-A round of financing in July this year, led by Shenzhen Capital Group, followed by Huanuo, and followed by Baili Capital. This round of financing will be used to improve the content in the platform, achieve e-commerce monetization, and construct an offline parent-child center.
QMTT uses “Storytime with Mommy” to help build a UGC-based audio sharing platform.
QMTT has two main characteristics:
- 90% of the content is from moms recording stories they tell their children every day (the remaining 10% are from publishers and other content providers).
- Besides storytelling, the content on QMTT platform also include English, Chinese culture, nursery rhymes, trivia information, and parenting techniques for mothers, such as child-rearing philosophy, etc.
QMTT co-founder Wang Qinghai told Kr-Asia that they currently have 200,000 video-blogger moms registered on the platform, and about 50,000 user-generated entries are added every day. There are six million subscribers, 400,000 daily active users, and a retention rate of 50% for the next day. Mothers record the stories they tell their children and share their own educational philosophy through QMTT. Wang Qinghai believes that mothers using these online functions are empathetic and are more easily to be swayed by their trusted video bloggers, and this influence can be spread much wider across the platform.
After gaining increased user loyalty and clear user profiles (mothers of children aged 0-8, of which 80% are mothers of children aged 1-6 years), QMTT App has set up its online store this month, officially to monetize their content. Top video bloggers will be able to create content (audio + content) related to the maternity and child products they are promoting.
Wang Qinghai explains that there are 20 million types of domestic children’s picture books alone with annual sales of up to tens of billions. Therefore, maternity and child e-commerce providers have a huge potential in this rapidly growing market. Also, QMTT has been collaborating with brands of baby products including toys. Their cooperation includes but not limited to content marketing and creation of e-commerce channels.
Wang Qinghai expects in the foreseeable future that content-based e-commerce will account for 80% of revenue, and the rest is mainly from advertising and so on. Last year, the advertisement has generated about a million in revenue for QMTT.
Additionally, in an attempt to encourage users to develop a habit to pay for content, QMTT is trying to introduce a curriculum system adopted by early childhood education institutions to strengthen their content influence.
Following the trend of offline experience store this year, OMO (Online-Merge-Offline) is also a part of QMTT’s goalto further profit from e-commerce.
QMTT intends to establish offline parent-child centers, providing early education, family recreation, and other one-stop services, creating jobs for 42% of the full-time mothers on the platform, and also to make up for the reduced activities on the platform during the holidays.
QMTT has revealed plans to set up offline shops in Wuhan, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and other places in the first half of next year.
The founder of QMTT, Lu Bu, previously worked for Tencent and has ten years of experience in product operations; co-founder Wang Qinghai is an Internet entrepreneur with 11 years of experience in e-commerce and six years of experience in e-commerce operations for maternity and infant toys. The third co-founder, Zhang Lin, was a senior product manager at Tencent.