Fresh food e-commerce platform Missfresh received USD 230M for Series C+
Missfresh
Founder: Xu Zheng
Founded in: 2015
Financing status: RMB 1.5 billion (USD 230 million) for Series C+ financing in 2017
Fresh food e-commerce platform, Missfresh, received USD 230 million for Series C on September 20 to invest in market expansion plans.
Missfresh is a fresh food e-commerce platform that provides users with all categories of fresh food, such as fruits and vegetables, seafood, meat, poultry, milk, snacks, and so on. It came up with an innovative solution to the problem of how to keep foods fresh during delivery: establish its warehouses in communities. It established a cold chain logistics system in major cities to provide users with two hour door-to-door delivery service, which includes city sorting centers for large-scale regulation, as well as community distribution centers for door-to-door delivery. Meanwhile, most of its community distribution centers are located within 3 kilometers from any given user. In this way, it can shorten the distance of door-to-door delivery, as well as save cost.
Founded in 2015 in Beijing, Missfresh’s services covers 13 cities in China, and has made a profit in some first-tier cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. In August this year, the company joined the unmanned retail industry that places unmanned shelves in offices to sell fresh food.
Previously, Missfresh raised funding from Tencent. This new financing round was led by Tiger Global and Genesis Capital. The capital will be used to place more unmanned shelves in offices, as well as invest in market expansion plans to boost its fresh food e-commerce businesses.
Online rental platform Baletu received undisclosed Series B in tens of millions of USD
Baletu
Founded in: 2014
Financing status: Series B financing round in 2017 amounting to hundreds of millions of RMB (tens of millions of USD)
Online rental platform, Baletu, received undisclosed Series B in tens of millions of USD on September 21 to deploy intelligent hardware in its houses.
Baletu is an online rental platform that provides users with high efficiency house rental services with a better experience. It cooperates directly with landlords to collect housing resources for its platform. In order to confirm the accuracy of the housing information on its platform, Baletu requires landlords to upload photos and descriptions about their housing information. Besides, Baletu assigns part-time staff to verify information on-site, such as the distance to the subway station, whether there is an independent toilet, area, orientation, and so on. Additionally, it removes all online housing information within seven days of uploading, and landlords can choose to renew it.
Founded in 2014 in Shanghai, it currently has more than 100,000 registered users, its services cover Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and other first-tier cities, and there are 1 million houses on its rental platform. It also established a platform to help landlords manage their houses easily, including making appointments, deposits, contract signing, rent, and so on. All these processes are electronic and can be completed online through its platform.
This Series B financing round was led by David Chao, the founder of DCM. Baletu plans to use the funds to expand its business to more cities across China, and place intelligent hardware in its houses for rent to promote electronic management with higher efficiency.
(Top photo from 699pic.com)