「Pilton宠尔顿」完成3000万元A轮融资，宠物智能舱已铺出超1万台丨36氪首发

36Kr has learned that the pet smart cabin brand "Pilton" has completed a Series A financing of 30 million yuan. This round is led by Anji Industrial Fund, with old shareholders Bohuiyuan Venture Capital and Zhichong Technology participating. Qianyou Venture Capital serves as the exclusive financial advisor for this round.

Pilton was born in 2022 and is a pet smart product brand under Xiaochong Technology. Previously, 36Kr reported that Pilton completed an angel round of financing in 2023. Its business initially entered from offline pet parks. Considering improving the pet boarding environment, it developed and launched the "Pilton Pet Smart Cabin". According to the research results of iiMedia Research, Pilton is the "pioneer of pet smart cabins".

This round of financing is an epitome of the rapid development of Pilton's business. According to Lu Fan, the founder of Pilton, who disclosed to 36Kr, This year, Pilton expects to achieve a sales volume of nearly 40 million yuan, a 6-fold increase compared to last year. Its pet smart cabin products have been distributed over 10,000 units, and the products are sold to 14 countries and regions.

Product image of Pilton Pet Smart Cabin

The pet economy is an important branch of the consumer market. Represented by the post-90s and post-00s and other new generations, the pet-owning group in China is growing rapidly, and they will devote more effort to their pets, driving the continuous growth of comprehensive consumption such as pet food, clothing, housing, transportation, and daily necessities.

Lu Fan has a view that "pets are the real metaverse of humans", that is, humans control and arrange the entire life cycle of pets. And with the development of society, humans gradually map their own consumption habits to pets, such as giving pets better food, buying clothes, and various pet smart devices.

The pet smart cabin solves the problem of pet housing. It uses functions such as smart cameras, fresh air systems, temperature and humidity regulation, and smart cleaning to integrate the daily life needs of pets for eating, drinking, defecating, and sleeping into "all in one". Whether at home, in a hotel, or in a shopping mall, it can make pets live better.

In Lu Fan's opinion, 2024 is the first year of the development of pet smart cabins. After last year's market education, in addition to the demand from the C-end, the demand from the B-end is also growing vigorously. This year, most mid-to-high-end pet stores, especially shopping mall stores and high-end large-scale comprehensive pet stores, have begun to use smart cabins to build living and boarding areas.

The application of Pilton Pet Smart Cabin in offline stores

Lu Fan said that for the aforementioned B-end customers, the smart cabin has three advantages: First, compared to the wooden cages and iron cages in the past, the cabin has a higher appearance. Secondly, the pet smart service functions are complete, improving the boarding environment; Thirdly, the intelligent and unmanned upgrade can help reduce the operating costs of enterprises.

It is reported that this year, Pilton has expanded a large number of B-end customers and scenarios. For example, in pet hospitals, it cooperates with chain pet hospitals such as Chongai International and Linghua Hospital to use smart cabins for pet treatment assistance. In addition, many pet-friendly hotels, shopping malls, scenic spots, and catering chain brands have also purchased pet smart cabins to provide temporary pet boarding services for in-store consumers.

Lu Fan said, "This year's pet smart cabin has jumped out of the pet industry itself and evolved into the infrastructure for pet-friendly scenarios."

Not only in China, but the overseas market also has a high acceptance of smart cabins. Last year, Lu Fan once told us that after the smart cabin product was launched, it quickly received order demands from customers at home and abroad, and entered overseas markets such as Australia, the United States, Japan, and Canada.

Over the past year or so, Pilton's smart cabin products have accelerated their pace of going overseas, especially with outstanding performance in the East Asia and Southeast Asia markets, such as Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan region, and Hong Kong region, and the vast majority are concentrated in the B-end market.

In Lu Fan's view, the high acceptance of this market at home and abroad is mainly due to two reasons. One is that the pet store is at the starting point of change. "It's a bit like the hotel industry 15 years ago, all fighting alone," and starting from this year, various pet superstores and professional chain stores have begun to appear. In this case, pet stores need to develop towards nationalization, chain operation, and standardization, and accordingly, they need standardized living and boarding spaces.

Lu Fan said that according to different functions, pet stores can be divided into grooming spaces, living spaces, boarding spaces, commodity spaces, and interactive entertainment spaces. To achieve chain operation, it is necessary to ensure that the infrastructure of each space is standardized enough to accurately control costs while achieving chain operation.

The second reason is that the new generation of pet owners has put forward new requirements for the aesthetics of pet products and the living environment of pets. This upgrade in C-end demand also forces the B-end to upgrade and transform equipment to attract this type of consumer to the store and provide value-added services.

Based on market demand, Pilton has made a series of technological innovations to its pet smart cabin products this year. For example, in terms of functions, in response to the needs of breeding and pet treatment, the functions of oxygen inlet and atomization inlet are added, which can directly perform oxygen inhalation and atomization treatment on pets in the cabin. In addition, they have upgraded all the fresh air systems, odor filtering systems, lights, smart cameras, air conditioners, and anti-virus hardware functions to be intelligent, and all are transferred from the APP to the mini-program, which is more convenient to operate.

According to Lu Fan, this year, Pilton also cooperated with industry professional institutions to upgrade the pet odor filtering system and collaborated with Tongji University to develop a smart AI chip that can locally process the basic actions of cats, the recognition of pet faces, and the judgment of the pet's health status.

Last year, Pilton's smart cabin only had 4-5 SKUs. By this year, the product line has expanded to 14 SKUs. Based on cats and dogs, it has added coverage of pet species such as snakes, lizards, and parrots. And the functions of different products are modularly designed to efficiently integrate the upstream supply chain.

This financing will be mainly used for the research and development of intelligent products. In addition to the smart cabin, Pilton has also developed intelligent products such as an automatic food and water dispenser and a smart drying box, and has developed the Pilton OS operating system to build a complete set of pet B-end ecosystem to help B-end customers improve operational efficiency.

The cute pet-themed brand Super Bird Bureau is one of Pilton's customers. In November this year, Super Bird Bureau opened its first store in Hunan, with an area of over 2000 square meters. This store is also their first smart store. Based on Pilton OS, it has built a smart system including a cute pet adoption center, an interactive area, and a grooming order-taking system.

Currently, Pilton's sales are all direct sales businesses, and it has deployed about 1500 pet stores. It is expected to reach about 1700-1800 by the end of the year. After this round of financing, they plan to adopt a diversified sales method, including exploring the rental business to help B-end customers reduce investment costs.

The overseas market is also the next key area for expansion. According to Lu Fan, Pilton will focus on Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan region next year.

Investor's view:

The relevant person in charge of Anji Industrial Fund, the lead investor of this round, said that compared with the past ten years, the number of current pet owners and related expenditures are increasing significantly. The pet living scene is a blue ocean market. The Pilton Pet Smart Cabin invented by Xiaochong Technology, with intelligence as the premise, improves the living environment of pets through technology, and quickly opens up a market beyond traditional channels such as pet stores, making the pet cabin the infrastructure of pet-friendly scenarios. In terms of the team, the founder team comes from Internet giants and has many years of entrepreneurial experience, and has a strong grasp of user mentality and Internet marketing.

Anji has a strong industrial foundation, which can provide good production support and talent support for the Xiaochong Technology team. Anji also has local enterprises in the large animal protection category, which can give full play to the role of industrial synergy to help Xiaochong develop the upstream and downstream industries better.