QinBaobao Files IPO: How a Family-Centric Parenting Platform Attracted Tens of Millions of Users with Backing from Shunwei Capital and Fosun Group

Qinbaobao CEO Feng Peihua

Competition in the maternal and child platform sector has reached a red-ocean state, yet Qinbaobao has amassed tens of millions of precise users within just four years, securing investments from Sinovation Ventures, Shunwei Capital, and Fosun Group.

The company’s flagship product, the “Qinbaobao” app, centers on baby growth tracking and an intelligent parenting assistant. It provides young families with a one-stop parenting service platform that includes a private parent-child space, professional caregiving knowledge, community interaction, and maternal and infant products, thereby encouraging family members to actively participate in their child’s development.

So, how has this company operated and grown, and what new strategies will it implement in 2018? VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) interviewed Feng Peihua, CEO of Qinbaobao, to share how Qinbaobao acquired tens of millions of precise users in the maternal and infant market and became a leading platform.

The maternal and infant industry is a highly fragmented sector, with different entrepreneurs entering from areas such as record-keeping, knowledge sharing, social networking, and shopping to carve out their share of this large market.

Qinbaobao initially entered the maternal and infant sector by addressing the need for “recording.” Explaining the rationale, Feng Peihua told reporters, “Our market analysis at the time revealed that users had a fundamental need to store and share photos of their children, and this was inherently a family-oriented activity. Additionally, our team had accumulated years of technical expertise in the storage and management of images and audio.”

It has been reported that Feng Peihua worked at ArcSoft, a globally renowned company specializing in computational photography and computer vision technologies, for over ten years. He held various positions including Architect, Director, and Vice President, where he was responsible for product development and R&D within the Mobile Business Unit. He led the development of more than 20 products and served prominent clients such as Samsung, Nokia, Huawei, and Sony.

Currently, Qinbaobao processes millions of photos and videos every day. To provide users with a better experience, it is essential to implement robust technical processing and optimization.

Currently, Qinbaobao has a core technical team of more than 50 members. “Our technical capabilities are quite advanced. For instance, with regard to currently popular technologies such as deep learning and facial recognition, we already had in-depth understanding and hands-on experience as early as ten years ago. We have a dedicated team providing multimedia technology support.”

Building on its technological advantages, Qinbaobao has chosen a development path distinct from other maternal and infant platforms that primarily target mothers. By entering the market with features centered around growth tracking and private social networking, it leverages the family-centric nature of its user base. “Since maternal and infant users operate as family units—including not only mothers but also fathers, grandparents, and other relatives—acquiring one core user essentially brings in the entire household, and even extends to the wider family circle and close personal friends.”

Upon its launch, Qinbaobao already supported a rich array of features in its product design, including photos, videos, text-based journals, and growth milestone videos. Incorporating social elements such as commenting, liking, and sharing, the platform inherently possesses viral social propagation capabilities, prompting users to spontaneously invite family members and friends to follow their baby’s space to view and share moments of their child’s growth and family updates.

“Such features are rare in the market, so we have been quite effective in acquiring seed users, resulting in solid organic growth. This is also a key advantage of our product.”

By advocating for whole-family participation in parenting and jointly documenting children’s growth, Qinbaobao brings together parents, grandparents, and extended family members, thereby establishing a baby-centric, family-unit-based user system that enables the platform to amass extensive, multi-dimensional user profiles.

The persistent challenge in the maternal and infant industry has been customer acquisition. However, unlike other platforms in the sector, Qinbaobao has not relied on cash subsidies or red-packet incentives to attract new users.

Feng Peihua stated, “Currently, approximately 60% of our users are acquired through organic growth. After using Qinbaobao, users spontaneously invite their family members and friends to join the platform. This indicates that once users engage with our product, they strongly resonate with our brand tone and product approach, thereby generating a word-of-mouth effect. Furthermore, in terms of user acquisition, we selectively leverage precise channels that closely align with our target demographic. We maintain strict cost controls, ensuring that the traffic acquired is of high quality.”

Focusing on product development to earn user trust is the growth strategy of Qinbaobao. “We prioritize serving high-quality users and then uncovering their needs, rather than adopting the traditional,粗放式 approach to traffic acquisition.”

As for precise channels, Feng Peihua believes that “since each platform has different user characteristics, the precise channels will also vary, with different focuses at different stages of development. In its early days, Qinbaobao relied heavily on channels such as GDT (Guangdiantong), which allows for targeted ad placements. Key opinion leaders on Weibo also helped acquire users. For a period, SEO and other methods were employed, and the company established in-depth collaborations with several female-focused apps and mobile phone manufacturers.”

In the traffic market of the maternal and infant sector, a significant change occurred in 2017: online community traffic continued to concentrate, while offline traffic gained increasing importance. “Community traffic will remain in a bonus period in 2018. We are also strategically positioning ourselves in this area, particularly in third- and fourth-tier cities, where opportunities still exist.”

However, Feng Peihua stated that the approach would differ somewhat, expressing optimism about offline traffic. Qinbaobao has already launched its “Home-School Interaction” service, catering to kindergartens and early childhood education institutions. On the Qinbaobao platform, kindergartens can create dedicated spaces for each class, which parents can follow. Through updates posted by teachers, parents can monitor their children’s performance at kindergarten.

“User acquisition in 2018 will certainly require a more comprehensive approach; relying on a single channel alone is detrimental to long-term competitiveness.”

Qinbaobao was officially launched in January 2013, securing investments from Innovation Works and Shunwei Capital. In November 2016, it received tens of millions of US dollars in Series B funding from Fosun Group. By June 2015, its user base had surpassed 10 million, reaching 50 million by June 2017. After more than four years of development, Qinbaobao has amassed a user base of tens of millions, primarily consisting of mid-to-high-end family users.

Over the past four years, Qinbaobao has gone through three stages: incubation, product growth, and product refinement coupled with business model establishment.

The first incubation period, roughly from 2013 to 2014, can be referred to as Qinbaobao Version 1.0. “This version actually featured only recording capabilities, providing a family-oriented parent-child space where members could smoothly record and share photos and videos of their children. It did not include parenting resources or other features available today. At that time, there was no budget for promotion, and the team was very small, with only about three R&D staff members. The app achieved organic growth after launch, reaching a daily active user (DAU) base of over 100,000.”

During the second growth phase of the product, between the angel round (led by Innovation Works) and Series A financing (led by Shunwei Capital), Qinbaobao built a comprehensive parenting system on top of its original parent-child space. Meanwhile, “through targeted paid promotion, we became the undisputed leader in our core market segment and ranked among the top platforms in the overall maternal and infant industry.”

During the third phase, focused on product refinement and business model establishment, Qinbaobao has established three core pillars—Space, Parenting, and Lifestyle—and developed its core commercialization capabilities. “We have a clear strategy for building a comprehensive monetization system and are steadily executing it.”

In building its business ecosystem, one core element is the application of big data. Feng Peihua revealed, “Currently, our entire operational platform and backend service system are built on big data. As early as 2016, Qinbaobao began leveraging big data and deep learning to revamp its backend technical architecture. The new version delivers personalized and intelligent content tailored to users’ parenting knowledge frameworks, and is scheduled for release in January. On this foundation, third-party brand promotion, traffic integration, and service connectivity are also fully driven by big data, ensuring high precision.”

Backed by big data from tens of millions of Qinbaobao users, the technology leverages a comprehensive user ecosystem that includes children and their family members and friends who care about their development. This network brings together parents, grandparents, and extended family, capturing complete personalized growth trajectories for each child as well as detailed family relationship maps. “These rich datasets enable us to gain deeper insights into the needs of each family at different stages of their child’s development.”

By accurately understanding user needs, Qinbaobao will provide high-quality products and services for children and families, based on each child’s personalized growth.

During the interview, Feng Peihua repeatedly emphasized the concept of “core users.” For Qinbaobao, its core users are young middle-class families, and its business logic is to meet the practical needs of these users.

What do users truly need? With the arrival of children, families enter a period of robust consumption, creating an urgent demand for comprehensive household upgrades and improved quality of life. “Parents and infants are in strong need of high-quality brands and products. Meanwhile, merchants also seek effective ways to reach their target customers. Qinbaobao serves as a connector, bridging premium brands with user needs. We have developed a product recommendation engine to help users find the items they need most.”

“Due to the high degree of fragmentation in the maternal and infant sector, for non-standardized products that have not yet established brand recognition, Qinbaobao will directly connect factories with users, linking high-quality manufacturing capabilities to consumer demand. ‘For items such as children’s clothing, picture books, and toys, we will directly link factories to consumers in 2018 and develop private-label brands to provide users with high-quality products.’”

VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that Qinbaobao has established in-depth collaborations with numerous companies, including brand advertising agencies, the “Big Four” infant formula brands, and diaper manufacturers, with frequent cooperative activities. “In terms of cross-promotion and joint campaigns, we have also strengthened our partnerships with YoYo Park, Uncle Kai’s Storytelling, and WeDoctor. Over the past few decades, Chinese consumers have developed strong purchasing power, and demand for high-quality products and services continues to grow.”

The maternal and infant sector is a massive market with trillion-yuan potential, characterized by intense competition; in the internet space, several industry giants have already emerged.

On competition, Feng Peihua stated, “We actually spend relatively little time analyzing our competitors; we may only keep an eye on the user base of competing products. This is tied to our philosophy: we do not believe that engaging in daily turf wars with rivals is valuable. As long as you serve your target population and meet user needs, you can continuously achieve results and build a strong reputation.”

Regarding future development, Feng Peihua believes that a company must identify its core target audience and enhance product experience; as demand continues to grow, competitiveness will naturally become prominent. Furthermore, he stated, “A company’s philosophy and cultural values also drive its progress, ultimately differentiating its products from those of competitors.”