Moody

Moody is a Chinese colored-contact brand founded in October 2019 by Ciran Ci (慈然), who serves as founder and CEO . The company positions itself around an "emotion" concept, using the wordplay between its name "moody" and the mood-based branding to connect with young consumers .

The company grew rapidly from launch: it hit Tmall within three months of founding and broke RMB 200 million in transaction volume in its first year, with nearly RMB 40 million in single-month sales during the 2020 Double 11 shopping festival while offering only four SKUs . Moody has emphasized heavy investment in material R&D and supply chain control, including setting up a water-polymer materials lab in Taiwan in 2019 and partnering with what it describes as Asia's only fully automated contact-lens manufacturer . By late 2021, it reported having invested RMB 300 million in materials and production-line R&D, with plans to invest over RMB 500 million more .

Moody has raised multiple funding rounds from prominent investors. Its angel round was led by Hillhouse (高瓴创投), with Hillhouse continuing to add in the Series A; Source Code Capital (源码资本) also joined in Series A and has continued to increase its stake in subsequent rounds . 5Y Capital (五源资本) and KKR co-led a Series C round exceeding RMB 1 billion in late 2021, with XVC also among its backers .

Ciran Ci, who told 暗涌Waves that Moody was his third formal startup, has emphasized organizational building and recruiting top talent, including personally doing executive search early on to compete for candidates untouched by headhunters . The core team draws from companies including P&G, L'Oréal, Johnson & Johnson, Alibaba, and ByteDance, as well as optical firms like Johnson & Johnson Vision, CooperVision, and Bausch + Lomb .