China’s Grindr ‘Blued’ Lands New Financing, Eyes U.S. IPO

Chinese gay flirting app Blued announced on Wednesday the completion of a Series C and C+ round led by Ventech China and Vision Knight Capital respectively. The startup said the funding size is in the hundreds of millions of RMB, without disclosing the specific amount.

Founded as a virtual community for gay men in 2000, Blued has grown rapidly along with changing public attitudes toward gay people. The app now claims to have 27 million users as of February this year, of which 20%, or 6 million, come from overseas markets. The company claims to dominate nearly 90% of China’s gay instant messaging market.

Blued, which already available in 9 languages, is now eying an international expansion to compete with the likes of highly-popular U.S. app Grindr, which recently sold a stake to Chinese firm Beijing Kulun. The proceeds from Blued’s latest injection are earmarked for building offices in more countries, recruitment, localization and acquisitions.

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