36Kr Exclusive: "Dolphin Dryer" Secures 50 Million Yuan in Series A Financing, Plans to Deploy 50,000 Devices in National Colleges Next Year

36Kr has learned that "Dolphin Dryer" has recently completed a Series A financing of 50 million yuan. The investor is Nantian Shujin Venture Capital Management Co., Ltd., and the post-investment valuation is 500 million yuan. This round of financing is mainly used for expanding scene locations, large-scale equipment production, and talent building.

"Dolphin Dryer" was established in 2021. It is a shared dryer company focused on essential scenarios such as universities, apartments, and staff dormitories. Based on its independently developed "hanging non-contact" upright dryer equipment, it is committed to solving the problem of users' difficulty in drying clothes due to weather and space. Last May, it received tens of millions of yuan in angel round financing from Hongqi Investment Group.

Recently, topics such as "Hotel Laundry" and "A man rents a hourly room to wash 8 down jackets and 10 sweaters" have become hot topics on the Internet. Most of these people are college students. Because the space in university dormitories is limited, the number of washing machines is small, and the capacity is not large enough to meet the large demand for laundry. Especially in winter, it is difficult to dry the down jackets after washing, so many people go to the hotel to do laundry mostly for the dryer.

According to the founder Hu Yunming, there are two types of drying equipment on the market. One is a small-power household dryer with a price of about one or two hundred yuan. The drying time usually takes several hours, and the function is relatively single. The other is a more common drum dryer with a higher price, and some have added functions of sterilization and mite removal.

However, these traditional drying equipment either have disadvantages such as long drying time, single function, and inability to be shared commercially, or the clothes are mixed, easily damaged, and unhygienic. He wondered if these pain points could be solved through some methods, and thus "Dolphin Dryer" came into being.

Hu Yunming revealed that "Dolphin Dryer" uses its self-developed air circulation system and heating system to improve the drying and disinfection efficiency through algorithms and temperature monitoring components. He told 36Kr that the difficulty of the dryer cabinet equipment is to achieve efficiency improvement with lower energy consumption. After many technical iterations, the equipment's power consumption has dropped from 3 kWh to 2100 Wh. The next step is to continue to optimize the equipment power and shorten the drying time.

It is reported that the "hanging non-contact, fast drying without damaging clothes" upright dryer equipment of "Dolphin Dryer" avoids the contact between clothes and the public area, and can perform drying, disinfection, sterilization, mite removal, and odor removal at different temperatures for different materials and types of clothes. Different from the high-temperature drying and sterilization of ordinary dryers, "Dolphin Dryer" achieves disinfection and mite removal through ultraviolet rays and ozone.

Dolphin Dryer equipment, provided by the interviewee

In addition, "Dolphin Dryer" uses an intelligent control system to automatically adjust the fan speed and temperature according to the humidity, type of clothes, and user needs to ensure that the clothes can be dried and sterilized within 1 hour, avoiding damage to the clothes caused by continuous heating.

At present, "Dolphin Dryer" has deployed nearly 5,000 shared dryer cabinets in Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guizhou, Sichuan, Hubei and other places. Among them, major universities are the key scenarios for its expansion. It has now laid out equipment in more than 50 universities in more than 30 cities, hoping to achieve full coverage of first- and second-tier cities in key provinces except for remote areas by the end of the year. In addition, it has also reached cooperation with chain brands such as Vanke Boyu, Longfor Guanyu, Mofang Apartment, and China Resources Youchao Apartment; in the future, it will also enter scenarios such as staff dormitories, hospitals, and hotels.

Hu Yunming estimates that based on the calculation of laying 30 to 50 units in each of the 3,000 universities, the imagination space in the campus scene is about 150,000 to 200,000 units. And next year, "Dolphin Dryer" plans to deploy 50,000 units in universities nationwide, and in the future, it will also create its own drying brand.