(Yicai Global) July 6 -- China's Mia.Com, a Sequoia-backed mother and baby product platform once valued at over CNY10 billion (USD1.5 billion), will terminate its mobile application on Sept. 10 amid increasing competition with new e-commerce players.

The decision to close the app is made because of "changes in users' shopping habits," Huawang Online Trade, the platform operator, said recently in a statement. But its WeChat mini-program will remain active, it added.

Chinese app stores no longer show Android or iOS versions of the platform. Beijing-based Huawang already closed all physical stores of Mia.Com by late 2020.

It is hard to sustain a vertical e-commerce platform for baby and mom products, Securities Daily reported today, citing Zhang Yi, chief executive of iiMedia Research Group. The industry is slowing amid China's declining birthrate and the competition is intensifying due to rising comprehensive e-commerce platforms and live-streaming e-commerce, Zhang added.

Mia.Com went online in 2014, becoming one of the first online platforms in China to sell imported maternity products. It was founded by stay-at-home mom Liu Nan, formerly a management trainee at Dow Chemicals.

Mia.Com raised over CNY2 billion between 2014 to 2016. In September 2015, H Capital, Sequoia Capital China, and tech titan Baidu injected USD150 million into the platform during its Series D round of financing, the largest in the domestic sector at the time. The Series E was finished in October 2016.

Mia.Com had served over 50 million users as of December 2018 and its annual sales once reached CNY1 billion (USD149.1 million).

Editors: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi