Tencent-backed on-demand laundry app gets $20M funding just 4 months after seed round

Edaixi, the on-demand laundry app that Tencent invested a US$3.2 million seed round of funding into in July, has already raised a series A round worth US$20 million, according to QQ Tech. This latest investment comes from Matrix Partners and SIG.

The doorstep pickup laundry service – available via native app, WeChat service account, and website – is backed by longtime franchise of Chinese laundromats, Rongchang. Edaixi’s main service charges a flat RMB 99 (US$16) rate per each of its custom laundry bags, but it will also clean individual pieces of clothing, shoes, furniture, air conditioners, and handbags.

Edaixi’s WeChat service account app

CEO Lu Wenyong told QQ Tech that Edaixi sees 10,000 orders per day in Beijing, mostly through WeChat. Most of its customers are young people in their late 20s and early 30s.

This latest round of funding will be used to recruit more delivery drivers and scale up operations to more cities. The startup is still limited to Beijing for the time being, but plans to head into Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin. The money will also go toward user subsidies, which will help it undercut competition.

Laundry services are just type of the Uber-modeled, stuff-on-demand, online-to-offline startups that Chinese investors have been throwing money at. Transportation startups lead this trend, but other day-to-day app-enabled services are popping up as metropolitan Chinese enter the lazy economy.

While we probably won’t see a price war waged on the scale of Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, Edaixi is up against at least half a dozen like-minded apps, including 24tidy, which raised a sizable seed round earlier this year. Edaixi appears to be the most well-funded of the bunch so far.

(Source: QQ Tech)