China apartment rental firm Ziroom raises $621m
Ziroom, a Chinese apartment rental service provider, has raised a RMB4 billion ($621 million) Series A round of funding led by Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, and Tencent Holdings.
Other investors in the round include China Renaissance's Huaxing Growth Capital, Sunac Capital, General Atlantic, H Capital, Source Code Capital, Haixia Capital, and New Hope.
Beijing-based Ziroom was founded in 2011 by a team of professionals from HomeLink, China's largest real estate agency. It was spun out in 2016. The company leases apartments from individual owners, renovates the spaces, and then releases them.
Through an online-to-offline model, it offers a one-stop solution for the apartment rental process, from property searches and contract signing through payment and maintenance services. At present, Ziroom manages around 500,000 rooms in nine Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou.
“Rapid urbanization in China in recent years has resulted in a large urban rental population as over 70% of the migrant population in major cities are choosing to rent. As China’s largest long-term rental apartment asset manager, Ziroom has significant advantages in client acquisition, mobile internet application, big data collection and day-to-day operation,” Julian Cheng, co-head of Warburg Pincus China, said in a statement.
Warburg Pincus previously invested in Mofang, an apartment developer that targets young professionals in major Chinese cities. In 2015, the GP co-founded Nova, a company that acquires and converts old distressed properties into modern rental apartments and shared offices.
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