Acquired Early Investment Such As Amoeba Capital, Accompanied Nuggets Pet Smart Home Track

"China's pet market is the fastest growing in the world. At the same time, the maturity of China's local supply chain provides opportunities for making pet smart home products." Recently, Zhong Jinjun, the founder of the company, said in an interview with the 21st century economic report.

In January 2019, Zhong Jinjun founded the pet smart home company youpei unipal (hereinafter referred to as "youpai"). In the more than one year since its establishment, the company has successively completed Angel round and pre-A round financing, with a total financing amount of tens of millions of yuan. The investors include qishang capital and Amoeba capital.

On September 1 this year, youpei officially launched the first intelligent hardware product, the smart cat toilet "cat tower cata". In Zhong Jinjun's view, catta's listing is just the beginning. In the future, accompanying or will have a broader layout in pet intelligent hardware, intelligent retail of pet consumables, pet health data monitoring, and even pet insurance.

Continuous entrepreneurs start again

Zhong Jinjun has more than ten years of experience in the retail trade of consumer goods. He has served as the co-founder / partner executive of fangcaoji, pinshang red wine, xiaoenai app, loho glasses and other enterprises. On the back of his continuous entrepreneurship, Zhong Jinjun, born in 1989, is also a top "cat slave" with 20 years of experience in raising cats.

"Shenzhen is a lonely city, entrepreneurship itself is a lonely thing, but the company of pets makes me not so lonely." Zhong Jinjun said with emotion. However, while enjoying his pet rearing, Zhong Jinjun also suffered from the torture of shoveling excrement for the cat. Especially when it comes to business trips or holidays, shoveling excrement becomes a difficult problem. If it is not handled in time, the whole home will be full of peculiar smell. In the face of such a bad experience, Zhong Jinjun once again ignited the idea of starting a business.

At the same time, Zhong Jinjun also saw the huge potential of China's pet market. He said that compared with the pet market of developed countries such as the United States, China's pet market has a lot of room for development. There are 340 million people in the United States, and the pet penetration rate is close to 70%, which is the largest pet market in the world. Among China's 1.4 billion people, the pet feeding penetration rate is about 20%.

In recent years, due to the aging population, late marriage and late childbearing and other factors, keeping pets has become a way of emotional sustenance for more and more people, and China's pet market is growing rapidly. The consumption of intelligent pet products accounts for only about 10% of the total expenditure on pet rearing. And most of the products on the market are still in the initial stage from 0 to 1, there are many problems such as low technology content, serious homogenization and uneven product quality.

Seeing the market opportunities and problems, Zhong Jinjun founded youpei in 2019. Most of the founding team members are senior executives of listed companies and Japanese enterprises, and many of them are senior bulls of Huawei, Tencent and Alibaba.

Dogs and cats are the two main types of pets in the pet market. The accompanying team has seriously considered whether to be a cat or dog market. Zhong Jinjun explained that the team finally chose to be a cat market, first of all, because cats are more standardized than dogs. Keeping a cat is mainly about eating, drinking and pulling. The cat toilet is extremely high-frequency and just needed. It is necessary for every cat family.

Second, the cat market is growing rapidly. Data show that the average annual growth rate of pet dogs in China is 1.9%, and that of cats is 8.2%, 4.3 times that of dogs. Meanwhile, the number of cats in China will reach 24.51 million in 2019, an increase of 8.6% over that in 2018. The number of cats has reached 44.21 million, with a market scale of 78 billion, up 19.6% compared with that in 2018.

From smart cat toilet to pet smart home market

In the early days, the investment of angel is still in its infancy. It is understood that qishang capital is an emerging investment institution, and its partners are composed of 36 returnees and post-95s. With regard to investment in accompanying companies, qishang capital said that qishang capital only focused on new species in the new consumption field of generation Z. Pets will accompany the younger generation for a lifetime, and the industrial dividend is immeasurable. The team is very sure that accompany will become the "top stream" of this track. The company has obvious technical advantages, the products are bright enough, and the cost performance is also very high.

Later, they got investment from amoeba capital. Zhong Jinjun revealed that in July and August of 2019, the team realized that angel financing could not cover the entire development process of intelligent hardware products, so it started financing again. Later, Zhong Jinjun met the investment team of amoeba capital in a summit. After listening to Zhong Jinjun's introduction of the project, it took less than a month for the investment team to decide on the investment with company.

The supply of capital helps the company survive the difficult period of early entrepreneurship. On September 1 this year, catta, the first intelligent product accompanied by the company, was officially launched. It is understood that the product was developed and designed by the team with an investment of 15 million over 18 months. The product has the functions of automatic cleaning feces, deodorization and bacteriostasis, with long endurance and easy to remove and wash. At the same time, it can monitor the health status of cats in real time through the sensor analysis of cat urine and feces.

Zhong Jinjun revealed that at present, it costs 827.31 yuan to produce a cat tower, while the price of the product is only 799 yuan. Why is the cat tower's price hanging upside down? Zhong Jinjun told the 21st century economic report that no enterprise is willing to trade at a loss, and the market price of products can not be set completely according to the production cost, but based on the market competition and the purchasing power of users.

"We set this price first to fit in with the market competition and user demand, and the loss in the early stage is within our maximum tolerance range." Zhong said. The current price of 799 is the price of the company's first batch of machines. With the help of capital, the company integrates the motor factory, plastic factory, shaft factory and chip factory to establish its own supply chain and industrial chain. Once the product chain matures, the cost of the product will inevitably decrease.

At the same time, cata is just an entry point. In the future, the company may have a broader development space in pet intelligent hardware, intelligent retail of pet consumables, pet health data monitoring, and even pet insurance.

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