“You got a pet to cure loneliness, but now you’re just raising a lonely pet” – Zhang Fan

China’s one-child policy and rapid urbanisation have made loneliness an eminent part in the lives of many Chinese. As a result, more and more people have started to keep pets as an antidote to solitude.

China currently has more than 150 million pets and the pet market is growing. However, many people here still don’t understand how much effort and care it takes to keep a pet. Zhang Fan, the founder of LiuLiu, has come up with a solution to this problem: he hopes to provide a platform for pet keepers, so that both humans and pets can fight loneliness together.

By using his network, pet owners can filter searches by location, species and preferences to meet other pet owners, find perfect partners for their pets, and learn more about adoption or foster care. Many pet keepers have even joked about how LiuLiu serves as a Tinder for pets. Currently, LiuLiu has more than 700 000 registered users, covering an array of species, such as dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, chinchillas, turtles and more.

In this rapidly growing and highly unpredictable market, Zhang Fan didn’t have any model or standard to follow, nor did he have any previous experiences to draw upon. Instead, he built up LiuLiu one step at a time, by trial and error. After two-years of backbreaking work to set up his company, he can finally let his voice be heard: “When people are faced with the unknown, many get scared, or they go into denial, denying to themselves and others that they can do it. But I just see a wide gap in the market. Exactly because nobody dares to do something, and nobody is doing it, we’re doing it – and we really love what we’re doing.”

We believe Zhang Fan is an Unreasonable person.