VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that on October 29, the next-generation family parenting brand “Qinbaobao” announced the completion of its Series C financing round, amounting to hundreds of millions of RMB. The round was led by TAL Education Group, with participation from existing investors Shunwei Capital (Series A investor) and Fosun Group (lead investor in Series B). Fanzhuo Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. Following this round of financing, Qinbaobao will deepen its strategic layout,Continuously improving upgrades in product, education, brand, and other areas, to better provide young families with higher-quality parenting services.
“This round of financing is a strategic investment from TAL Education Group, reflecting the strong alliance between the two parties,” said Feng Peihua, Founder and CEO of Qinbaobao. “Qinbaobao provides young families with ‘Pregnancy, Childrearing, and Education“Education is naturally an indispensable component of the three-tiered service model. TAL Education Group adheres to an investment strategy that ‘respects the laws of corporate development and growth trajectories, leverages each party’s technological and resource advantages, and fosters mutually beneficial cooperation for joint growth.’ This convinces me that our partnership can maximize our respective strengths. Beyond capital collaboration, the complementarity of resources and synergistic operations between both parties hold even greater promise.”
The Qinbaobao App is a mobile internet platform dedicated to providing parenting services for families during pregnancy and with children aged 0–6. Officially launched in 2013, its core features address the two most frequent user needs—Growth Records and the Entry Point for Smart Parenting, deeply cultivating its products with the aim of harnessing the power of technology to help families better care for and nurture their children. It provides young families with one-stop parenting services, including private parent-child spaces, online early education, professional childcare knowledge, community interaction, and maternal and infant products, to meet the personalized needs of family users in various scenarios.
Wu Ying, President of the Quality Education Business Group at TAL Education Group, stated: “As a mobile internet platform dedicated to providing one-stop parenting services for families during pregnancy and with children aged 0–6, Qinbaobao will better synergize with TAL Education Group to enhance itsPre-K Education Services and Products. Investing in Qinbaobao helps us gain a deeper understanding of the early childhood education sector, including children’s cognitive development and changes, parent-child relationships, and the critical role of family education in child development.”
Wu Ying believes that Qinbaobao’s advocacy for connecting family members to jointly participate in children’s growth, leveraging platform big data and AI technology to nurture children with scientific and personalized parenting methods, aligns closely with TAL Education Group’s philosophy of returning to the essence of education and driving educational progress through technology. “In the future, we look forward to forming complementary advantages with both parties in business areas such as early childhood education content, family education, and online quality education courses for children, jointly supporting the healthy growth of families and children in the new era.”
Product Advantages: Leading Domestic Private Parent-Child Space
Reporters learned that Qinbaobao is a private, shared cloud-based service that brings together family and friends who care about a child’s development into a single community. It enables them to jointly record and share milestones in the child’s growth, collectively support the child’s well-being, and permanently preserve their most cherished memories. The platform offers rich features, including photos, videos, written diaries, and growth highlight reels, and incorporates social elements such as comments, likes, and sharing.
After five years of accumulation, Qinbaobao’s Growth Record Space has amassed 3 billion uploaded photos and over 1.6 billion minutes of uploaded videos, establishing itself as a leading private parent-child platform in China. As strong social connections and growth-related content continue to accumulate, users’ cross-platform switching costs rise. By building a robust parenting product centered on parent-child relationships as the core bond, the company has derived more application scenarios and established unique competitive barriers through product strength and scalability.
Meeting the demand for intergenerational childcare, the growth potential of users in the “one caregiver, multiple children” model is substantial
Unlike other maternal and infant products that target only mothers, the “Qinbaobao APP” serves the entire family and is currently the only app that meets the needs of intergenerational childcare. Over 90% of users of similar parenting apps are mothers, whereas Qinbaobao’s user profile is much more diverse: mothers account for 53%, fathers 24%, grandparents 15%, and other relatives and friends 8%. With high levels of family engagement, its core feature of growth records creates a “one-to-many” sharing and viral effect, enabling rapid user expansion on a household basis and providing an inherent advantage in user growth.
Its family-oriented user structure gives “Qinbaobao APP” greater potential for user scale than comparable maternal and infant mobile applications. The mesh-like network among family members and relatives also creates a more complex relationship network, resulting in higher user stickiness.
Short Product Lifecycle for Parenting Products? Qinbaobao Is an Exception
Previously, the industry consensus held that the maternal and child sector’s greatest distinction from other industries lay in its short user lifecycle and rapid iteration, representing an inherent disadvantage. In contrast, the Qinbaobao APP, which originated as a “recording” tool and stores growth records for tens of millions of babies, has become a bond for family relationships.
As family social connections and parent-child records accumulate, they become difficult to migrate to other platforms. Instead, the app tends to remain in continuous use throughout a significant portion of the child’s upbringing. Its lifecycle is exceptionally long, spanning from pregnancy through age 12, and even extending to major life events such as marriage. As a dedicated repository for precious visual memories of “babies,” the Qinbaobao APP undoubtedly achieves higher user retention rates.
Newborn market penetration has risen year by year, exceeding 20% in 2018.
As of now, the number of registered users on the Qinbaobao app has exceeded 70 million. In terms of market penetration among newborns, Qinbaobao has shown a consistent year-on-year upward trend: the penetration rate was 8.5% in 2016, rose to 11% in 2017, and latest data for 2018 indicate that it has surpassed 20%. Qinbaobao is accelerating rapidly on its growth trajectory.
“Children are the center of the nuclear family and the bond that ties the extended family together; China’s maternal and infant market boasts broad development prospects.” Li Rui, Partner at Shunwei Capital—a co-investor in this funding round and the Series A investor in Qinbaobao—frankly stated, “Shunwei Capital first took notice of Qinbaobao’s outstanding founding team in 2014 and has provided continuous support through three consecutive rounds of financing since the Series A. This commitment reflects not only our optimism about China’s vast and rapidly growing maternal and infant market, but also our recognition of Qinbaobao’s business model, its founder Feng Peihua, and his management team. Shunwei looks forward to the powerful alliance between Qinbaobao and TAL Education Group, and we believe this collaboration will deliver superior early childhood education services and experiences to young families in China.”
“Leveraging its robust product capabilities, Qinbaobao has now evolved into a one-stop parenting platform integrating three core functions—‘recording, pregnancy, and daily life’—serving tens of millions of families and earning a strong reputation among household users.” Wang Changying, Chairman of Fosun’s Maternal, Infant, and Family Industry Group, expressed full affirmation of Qinbaobao’s growth, stating, “Fosun’s mission is to ‘create happy lives for one billion families worldwide,’ and Qinbaobao’s commitment to ‘helping maternal and infant families better care for and nurture their children’ is an integral component of this mission. As the brand continues to expand, Qinbaobao will play an increasingly vital role in Fosun’s strategic layout for the maternal, infant, and family sectors.”
Backed by TAL Education Group, Fosun International, Shunwei Capital, and Innovation Works, Qinbaobao leverages its profound industry heritage to precisely reach its target audience through more compelling, diversified business offerings and unique features, establishing a “channel” for emotional resonance with users. Today, the Qinbaobao app has become an iconic, phenomenon-level application in the parenting industry. As its strategic layout deepens, Qinbaobao will continue to accelerate on the fast track.
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