It was informed that the floral technology manufacturer Aibida has recently completed nearly a hundred million round A financing, led by Peakvalley Capital, Suzhou Youruike and other institutions and investors to invest. Aibida's previous investors, Xiaomi Technology and Shunwei Capital, remain the largest shareholders. This round of financing will be used to expand production bases and upgrade smart hardware products.
Founded in Kunming in 2014, Aibida is a horticultural technology company specializing in the development of flowers and related smart hardware. In the early days, Aibida provided flowers for the B-end with the name of “Flowers and Grass”, and provided the intelligent monitor for the maintenance of flowers at the C-end.
In early 2017, it was renamed “Aibida” and launched a Bluetooth smart flowerpot. Its function is similar to that of the intelligent monitor. The sensor of the pot can detect the environment of the plant, and the user can combine the plant database to maintain flowers.
At the end of this month, Aibida will release a second-generation smart flowerpot. Compared with the first generation, it can be connected by WiFi, which is more in line with user habits. In addition to monitoring, the second-generation smart flowerpot can automatically water and provide lighting flowers as they need. As a Xiaomi eco-chain investment company, the Aibida series of intelligent hardware products have been sold to 170 countries around the world with the help of Xiaomi Mall.
Since the last report, the ability of Aibida's flower supply has developed rapidly, mainly in four aspects:
In terms of production scale and capacity, Aibida has constructed 112,000 m2 of smart greenhouses in Kunming and Yinchuan, with a production capacity of 1 million plants per mu and an annual production capacity of 20 million pots.
In terms of planting varieties and technology, mini rose, the main flower variety of the Aibida is relatively difficult to plant. The general growers can only produce in the summer, but the Aibida variety can be produced all year around.
At the beginning of this year, Aibida began to operate the fresh-cut flower business. The main product is the Dutch cut flower rose. At present, Aibida has constructed a 2000-mu rose industrial park in Yunnan Malong. Li Lin said that this will be the most important flower production base in the next 3-5 years.
The flower supply channel of Aibida is mainly offline. At present, Aibida's regional partners and distributors have spread all over the country. At the same time, Aibida has also cooperated with large retailers such as Walmart, to become the first plant supplier to enter the national Walmart supermarket.
According to Aibida co-founder and COO Li Lin, Walmart's previous flower suppliers are local and lack large national growers. This is mainly due to the low standardization of the domestic flower industry and the large fluctuations in quality. It is difficult to guarantee the stable all-year-around supply (considering the quality of the flowers and the stability of the variety). Therefore, Aibida, with the large-scale planting and production of A-level quality flowers up to 70%, in terms of scale and quality, is more in line with the needs of Walmart’s national unified collection.
On the online channel, Aibida has Xiaomi Mall, Mijia Youpin, Taobao Tmall, Jingdong, and other online-shops. According to Li Lin, online e-commerce is more a channel to communicate directly with users and thus can respond sensitively to the market. At present, the monthly average GMV(Gross Merchandise Volume) of Aibida online e-commerce is more than 2 million RMB.
Source: 36kr(Huang Xuejiao)