Marriage services platform Hunliji, which translates roughly to “wedding calendar,” disclosed a US$70 million Series D1 round led by Orchid Asia and Matrix Partners China, completed in January this year. The round follows two Series C investments in 2018, including a US$65 million round last March, and a US$20 million round three months later in June.
Launched six years ago, Hunliji is China’s most funded platform in the internet marriage space. The app counts more than 50 million users and close to 200,000 wedding services merchants across 400 cities.
From its early days as a simple online storefront for wedding services merchants, Hunliji has evolved into a vertically integrated platform for wedding-related planning and management, e-commerce for marriage products, social sharing, wedding invitation features, and honeymoon travel services.
The company plans to use the funds to invest in artificial intelligence and platform innovation, as well as brand marketing and advertising, to boost its internationalization strategy, including planning weddings overseas and importing foreign wedding products. It will also expand its offline footprint in China.
Hunliji opened its 45th physical “Marriage Experience” store in China last month and plans to open 300 more locations in 2019. These brick-and-mortar outlets provide wedding coordination and consultation services, with each store generating an average of 40 million to 50 million transactions per year.
