Dances with apps

Dancers perform at the opening ceremony of a national square dancing event in Handan, Hebei province. [Photo by Hao Qunying/For China Daily]

Tangdou is one of the favorite online destinations of the aging and middle-aged women living a leisurely life in small and medium-sized cities.

As they began to use the app to connect with neighborhood groups to dance away their spare time, social networking ensued. And then: new friendships sprouted; communication increased and improved; online-to-offline communities emerged.

Zhang Yuan, founder and CEO of Tangdou, wants to expand his digital cultural and entertainment revolution to more small towns and cities.

"I hope Tangdou will become part of their lifestyle. For us, the huge group (of middle-aged women) will likely create a market worth at least 100 billion yuan ($14.48 billion).

"As more and more elderly and middle-aged women tap mobile internet, they would need their own cultural and entertainment niche in the cyberspace. This will create a new demographic dividend and help further develop mobile internet."

Although exact figures remain closely guarded, it is learnt the startup earns millions of yuan in monthly revenue from advertising. Future revenues are expected from fees collected from users of streaming app, who buy gifts and products while watching online content.

Xue Yongfeng, a senior analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Analysys, said the key challenges for the evolving dance tutorial segment are ensuring top quality of services and the ability to scale up.

"These particular women's groups have a high degree of loyalty to things they really like, such as square dancing. And they also tend to be picky about content and services. If they leave an app, it'd be really difficult to make them return."

There's one more reason why startups, investors, advertisers and sellers of products and services are keen to woo China's middle-aged women: the latter symbolize China's exploding consumption power.

Lifestyle-minded middle-aged women reportedly are a prime force that influences the global gold market trends. It is believed they also help their husbands manage household savings.

"These women are the finance ministers of their families－they control the purse strings, manage finances and draw up the household budget," said Zhang.

So, he said, Tangdou will focus on scaling up its communities in the short term, to be followed by efforts to scale up online transactions next year for health products, financial management products and groceries.