Founder of Fintech Firm Qudian Now Selling Precooked Dishes on Douyin

Luo Min, the founder of Qudian, a financial technology enterprise that was listed on the NYSE in 2017, started a livestreaming feed on Douyin on Wednesday, mainly to promote the company’s precooked food dishes.

Luo skillfully introduced the famous dishes’ history and introduced himself to web users who are not familiar with him, saying that “he is doing business transformation like Michael Yu, founder of New Oriental Education.”

According to the financial report released by Qudian on June 13, the company achieved total revenue of 201.8 million yuan ($30 million) in the first quarter of this year, a decrease of 60.9% compared with 515.7 million yuan in the same period of 2021. As of June 15, the share price of Qudian had fallen to less than $1.

Qudian’s share price rose to $34.35 on the day of its listing, an increase of more than 43%, and its market value once reached $11.3 billion. However, its stock price fell eventually below $10 within half a year. It even received a delisting warning in February due to its low stock price.

In the first quarter of this year, its financing income totaled 177.9 million yuan, a decrease of 50.8% compared with 361.8 million yuan in the same period of last year. Its loan facilitation income and other related income decreased by 96.1% to 500,000 yuan, compared with 12.2 million yuan in the first quarter of 2021.

Luo Min previously said that since January 1, 2018, he will no longer receive salary and bonus from the company before the market value of Qudian reaches $100 billion. However, as of June 15 this year, the market value of Qudian is only $250 million, having shrunk by 98% compared with $11.3 billion on the first day of listing.

Qudian started its business through providing loans for college students, and it later faced stricter supervision from regulators. However, its strategic cooperation with Alipay and Sesame Credit to provide loan services for white-collar workers has brought huge amounts of customers. Therefore, even under the regulation, the company’s revenue and net profit from 2017 to 2019 still show an upward annual trend. Starting from 2020, its business income began to decline.

Since 2017, Luo Min has tried to explore many fields, including retail of automobiles in 2017, luxury e-commerce platform “Wanlimu” in 2020, and K12 education in 2021. All of them failed.

SEE ALSO: Former Chairman of Luckin Coffee Charles Lu Enters Precooked Dishes Market

In May of this year, Luo Min uploaded his first video on Douyin, the Chinese mainland version of TikTok. Most of the livestreams on Luo’s channel focus on precooked dishes. According to the data released by iiMediaResearch, the scale of China’s precooked dishes market was 345.9 billion yuan in 2021, up 19.8% year-on-year. It is expected that the market will maintain a high growth rate in the future, garnering 1,072 billion yuan of market scale in 2026.