Fast food chain startup Huangtaiji announced that it received new strategic investment from Alibaba-backed food delivery platform Ele.me on Sunday. The amount of funding the company received has not been disclosed.
This investment will be used to further the cooperation between Huangtaiji and Ele.me in food safety and food supply chains so as to build a takeout ecosystem.
He Chang, CEO of Huangtaiji, said the round of investment will help Huangtaiji serve their whole fast food ecosystem. The company will focus on integrating supply chains and exploring high-end food varieties.
Founded in 2012 in Beijing, Huangtaiji aims to sell traditional Chinese food like pancakes, soymilk and tofu the way KFC sells sandwiches and sodas. The company has been using its own food delivery men and vehicles, but will now cooperate with Ele.me for food delivery services.
In an interview with Tencent’s tech channel, He claimed that Huangtaiji’s monthly orders doubled in the latter half of 2015, bringing monthly revenue to almost RMB 12 million (USD 1.8 million). And they aim to increase the monthly revenue to RMB 50 million this year.
The food delivery sector is hot in China. According to Chinese market research company Analysys, the transaction volume of China’s online takeout market reached RMB 45.7 billion in 2015, and the market will continue to have strong growth momentum, reaching RMB 245 billion in 2018.
Some other notable players in this scene include Baidu Waimai and Meituan which are backed by China’s tech giants Baidu and Tencent respectively.
Huangtaiji represents a strong competitor in the sector. Last June, the platform landed tens of millions of RMB in a round of Series A financing led by Share Capital, and last October received RMB 180 million in Series B financing led by software provider Shengjing 360.com and some individual investors.
(Top photo from Dianping.com)