Deal focus: Yidui delivers love by video

Live streaming has become a facet of life for China’s young consumers, a mainstay of online gaming, social networking, and e-commerce. It should come as little surprise that video dating has caught on as a way for these consumers to find love.

Against this backdrop, local video dating app operator Yidui has raised nearly $100 million in funding over the past six months. Smart phone brand Xiaomi and Sky9 Capital led the most recent round, which Robbie Ren, Yidui’s founder, says amounts to tens of millions of dollars. The previous investment, which closed last December, was led by XVC.

While most online dating platforms are membership-based, Yidui is open to anybody. It makes money by selling digital roses, which participants can use to purchase value-add services. “A high membership fee actually filters out many people and results in reduced coverage. It also reduces the possibility of delivering good matches,” Ren explains.

Within the youth demographic, Yidui focuses heavily on lower-tier cities, where people tend to have smaller social circles and often rely on traditional offline matchmaking. Around 50,000 matchmakers – typically middle-aged women – monitor activity, helping break the ice and stimulate conversation. They also make note of character traits and user experience, and this information is stored for future reference. However, these matchmakers are not Yidui employees. Users pay for their services.

While dating is typically a three-party meeting in a virtual room, other users can watch it unfold and even interact with the participants. For example, a man who is interested in a woman involved in another meeting could interrupt by proffering a digital rose.

Ren has no plans to turn Yidui into a broader streaming platform along the lines of ByteDance Technology’s TikTok offering. “Live streaming platforms create content to generate traffic, but we don’t produce any content,” he says. “We are an open platform that creates social opportunities. So far, there have never been more than 50 people in any of our virtual rooms. Our users are not spectators. They want to make real-time contact and fast judgments. This is totally a different ecosystem to a live streaming platform.”

Yidui has nearly 400 employees, of whom half are responsible for security, which involves verifying the identities of all users with the help of artificial intelligence software and blocking anyone who abuses the platform. Their other primary duty is more holistic and innovative in nature – maintaining the atmosphere. “If you do nothing, in three to six months, the atmosphere of your entire platform would disintegrate and your product would collapse,” says Ren.

He does not believe Yidui’s fortunes are tied to those of live streaming in general and whether it might be superseded by another technology-based solution. The key is to survival is finding ways to realize efficient social contact. “We are very open to new channels, no matter if it’s VR [virtual reality] or AR [artificial reality] or short video,” Ren says.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Early-stage
• China
• TMT
• Sky9 Capital
• Xiaomi
• XVC