Chinese ‘pocket movie theater’ PaPa raises $7.2M series A

Chinese portable video projection startup PaPa (not to be confused with China’s other PaPa) announced this week that it has completed an RMB 45 million (US$7.2 million) series A round. Specific investors have not been named, but this is the company’s second round of funding, following a RMB 5 million (US$800,000) angel round. Not bad for a company that’s less than a year old – PaPa was founded in November of 2014.

PaPa offers a product that it calls a “pocket movie theater,” a smart battery-powered portable video projector. The device is a small square that weighs just 200 grams, but is capable of projecting a full 1080p film on a single battery charge. It doesn’t have external inputs but its site promises a content library that includes more than one million films (thanks in part to a partnership with Youku-Tudou), 100,000 TV shows, and some support for gaming (although which games is unclear). The company calls it “an RMB 1000+ home IMAX solution” (I’m guessing IMAX’s lawyers will have something to say about that). The device isn’t actually on sale yet, but when it does come out, it’ll cost RMB 1499 (US$241).

Funds from this latest round of investment will go toward product development and talent recruitment. But PaPa already has quite a bit of money in the bank from two successful crowdfunding rounds on Taobao’s crowdfunding platform. Unsurprisingly, most of its backers have been young, tech-savvy urbanites.

Portable projectors haven’t blown up yet in China, but they are big business in Korea, where more than 300,000 units are reportedly sold each year (not bad given Korea’s comparatively tiny population). If PaPa can eventually achieve that same level of interest in China, it could aspire to sell millions of its “pocket theaters.” The company says it will profit not only from hardware sales, but also via ad channels and through gaming.