China’s Most Popular Gay Dating Platform BlueCity Acquires Lesbian Dating App

BlueCity, parent company of China’s largest gay dating app Blued, has just announced its acquisition of popular Chinese lesbian dating app LESDO, marking the first-ever deal within the country’s LGBTQ market.

LESDO is an app created specifically for Lesbian users and one of the most popular lesbian social apps in China along with Rela. No financial information was disclosed about the deal. 

"We can see the scale of existing lesbian apps are not big enough to meet the demand of a sizable market," BlueCity's founder and chief executive Ma Baoli said in an interview with Reuters. He added that BlueCity could offer algorithm support, marketing, and financing to boost customer retention and visibility as well as increase new subscribers of the app.

BlueCity also raised $84.8 million U.S. in a NASDAQ IPO offering in July, another significant milestone for the company. The vast majority of the company’s revenue (totaling $107 million in 2019) comes from users purchasing virtual gifts over in-app livestreams. The app had 49 million registered users at the end of 2019 as well, thanks to additional followings outside of China in India, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Baoli noted the personal struggle he faced as a gay man in China, where until 1997, it was criminalized. The stigma however still continues. China does not officially recognize same sex relationships, though it doesn’t explicitly ban them either, leaving LGBTQ people in a vulnerable place to try to form romantic relationships. Baoli himself was a police officer and lost his job and family when his identity as a gay man was revealed. Ma sees the company’s dating platform as a way to help LGBTQ people feel more connected and empowered as well as a tool to find relationships.

“Being a public company enables us to tell the world that we are an organization dedicated to the LGBTQ community, built hand-in-hand by both heterosexual and LGBTQ members, with a mission to make the world a better place by providing holistic services to address the lifetime needs of our community,” Ma said in a press release about the IPO. 

Still, Reuters points out that BlueCity has a “benign dynamic” with China’s regulators, and Ma has assured them that LESDO would comply with their regulations. Back in 2012, he worked with the government in combating the spread of HIV on the mainland.

Blued has run into controversy, too. Last year, it was forced to stop new subscribers from signing up because the app wasn’t enforcing the age requirements, putting young people at risk.

Ma said in a statement: “We continue to execute our strategy to expand services to serve other sub-groups of the broader LGBTQ community.” He added: “This acquisition represents our determination to better serve more members of the LGBTQ community.”