Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr reported today that steam cleaning startup Dayoo (大佑科技) has completed an angel round of financing valued at tens of millions of yuan, backed solely by Guozhong Venture, with YM Capital acting as the exclusive financial advisor.
Proceeds raised from this round will be spent on the R&D and manufacturing of cordless steam cleaners, market expansion and team building.
The Nanjing, Jiangsu Province-based company, founded in 2020, focuses on steam cleaning technologies for home use. It developed a modular cleaner and launched it on crowd-funding website Kickstarter in 2022.
Dayoo entered the space amid surging demands worldwide for disinfection products and solutions aimed at stemming the spread of coronavirus.
Steam cleaning, as an alternative to traditional methods of disinfection, can kill bacteria and germs quickly and is toxin-free, making it a favorite among an array of sought-after anti-Covid disinfectant and germicide.
According to third-party statistics cited by 36Kr, the gross merchandise value (GMV) of major markets for steam cleaning — from the United States and Britain to Germany and Japan — jumped from US$117 million in 2019 to US$387 million in 2022, with a CAGR of 35.2%.
What’s more, as people’s health awareness continues to increase, new product categories have emerged to meet the needs of younger generations for not just sterializing or inhibiting bacteria, but also deodorizing their homes.
And they increasingly are on the lookout for cordless, portable steam cleaners easy to carry around, in a contrast to most cabled products currently available in the overseas market.
Dayoo came on the scene in 2020 with innovations that satisfy these unmet needs. It debuted its first-generation steam cleaner on Xiaomi’s e-commerce platform and sold US$1 million worth of goods the same year. In 2021, it raised another US$650,000 from Indiegogo.
“Current steam cleaners are immature and encumbered by problems like an extended warmup period and inability to top up without cables,” said Sun Juan, founder and CEO of Dayoo. “We thus have become the most choosey consumers ourselves and this compels us to solve these issues with an engineering mindset, to ensure a better user experience.”
Sun said Dayoo’s products addressed the two major pain points of a majority of existing steam cleaners. One is to make the gadget cableless, which allows the user to clean the room without bending over and inducing fatigue.
The proportion of cordless vacuum in the entire vacuum category worldwide rose to 30.9% to 13.1%, 36Kr reported, citing unnamed market intelligence providers.
The GMV of wireless leaf blowers in the US almost tripled from US$27 million in 2020 to US$70 million in 2021, suggesting a stronger willingness of consumers to pay for cordless home cleaning contraptions.
Dayoo’s product line also stands out for its ease of use, said Sun. It fills up water automatically instead of being filled manually, and can become steam ready within 30 seconds — in a dramatic improvement to traditional products that take two and a half to eight and a half minutes to warm up.
The founder, Sun, is a serial entrepreneur with more than 10 years of experience in consumer electronics.
“Dayoo builds pioneering and unique cordless steam cleaners that align with market needs,” Guozhong Venture said in a post-investment statement. “They considerably improve the user’s cleaning efficiency and application.”
