Cathay, Shenzhen Fortune lead $58m round for China’s Aihuishou

A number of existing and new investors including Tiantu Capital, online retailer JD.com, Greenwoods Investment, Morningside Venture Capital and Shenzhen-based Qianhai FoF also took part in the round.

Aihuishou - the name means "love to recycle" - was founded in 2011 by a team that won a recycling-themed business plan competition at Fudan University. The online platform allows consumers to sell or recycle used laptops, mobile phones and tablets. Sellers can get cash for their devices or do part-exchanges for newer or refurbished models.

Aihuishou claims to account for more than a half of China's total electronic goods recycling market, having set up nearly 200 service stations in 18 first- and second-tier cities. It has also established partnerships with the likes of JD.com, smart phone maker Xiaomi, Samsung, and consumer drone maker DJI Technology. It has cleared transactions worth more than RMB1.8 billion so far this year, collecting over five million used mobile phones.

Recently Aihuishou launched two new services, Aijihui and Xianghuanji. Aijihui uses a crowdsourcing model to form offline partnerships with home appliance and consumer electronics retailers such as Gome and Suning Commerce. Meanwhile, Xianghuanji partners with Chinese handset makers like Huawei Technologies and Meizu to provide installment-based smart phone leasing services. The unit works with Ant Financial's Sesame Credit and Ant Check Later to run credit checks on customers.

Morningside committed $2 million to Aihuishou in a Series A round in 2011, while the International Financial Corporation (IFC) led a $8 million Series B in 2014. Last year, Tiantu led a $60 million Series C round for the company.

Aihuishou will use the new capital to strengthen its operations and work towards a domestic IPO, Wenjun Sun, the company's co-founder, told local media.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Technology
• Expansion
• China
• TMT
• Tiantu Capital
• Morningside Technologies
• Greenwoods Asset Management
• Growth capital