China’s most prestigious university just funded a crayfish delivery startup

Here’s a story that may or may not be true:

A few weeks ago, a man found himself at the offices of a Chinese tech startup looking for a ride home. As one does these days, he booked a car with Didi Kuaidi. But when the Didi driver showed up, he couldn’t find the man. So the driver called him: “Where are you?”

The man responded enthusiastically: “I’m at talking bullshit.”

The line was silent for a moment, and then there was a click. The Didi driver had hung up.

Xia Baby is not in the business of talking bullshit.

This story was published on the website of Xia Baby, a Beijing startup whose name sounds an awful lot like the Chinese slang term xiabibi (loosely, “talking bullshit”). The man looking for a ride had been at Xia Baby’s offices, but when speaking with the Didi driver he didn’t get the pronunciation of the English word “baby” quite right. Whoops.

Despite the similar-sounding slang, Xia Baby is not in the business of talking bullshit. Xia Baby is in a very different business: O2O crayfish delivery.

“That’s so cray,” you might be thinking, and I second that emotion. In fact, my first thought upon hearing that Xia Baby had raised a pre-A round of funding from Tsinghua University’s startup accelerator was that China’s online-to-offline (O2O) sector has finally jumped the shark. But it’s true. The amount was undisclosed, but in all likelihood China’s most famous university just poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into crayfish delivery.

Yes, Tsinghua University’s incubator is literally backing bottom-feeding. That’s cray-z.

Eating crayfish at a Xia Baby beta event.

Of course, for Xia Baby to join the ranks of upper-crust Asian (OK, I’ll stop) O2O providers like Ele.me and Didi, a ton of expansion is going to be required. Right now, the startup operates only inside the sixth ring road of Beijing. And while it doesn’t only offer spicy crayfish, that’s the company’s main focus (and it offers 20 different kinds of seasonings). At the moment, it’s operating via WeChat – it does have a website, but you can’t get any crayfish there.

If I were a lobster, I might be worried.