MSPEA, Crescent Point lead Series C round for China’s Qingke
Morgan Stanley Private Equity (MSPEA) and Crescent Point have jointly led a Series C round of funding for Qingke, a long-term rental apartment services platform in China.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but the latest round brings the company’s total funding to date to $100 million. Existing investors SAIF Partners, Fortune Capital, and Newsion Venture Capital also re-upped.
Shanghai-based Qingke was founded in 2012. Its de-centralized system – the operator acquires individual apartments as opposed to owning the whole building – focuses on young renters who are looking for cheaper rentals, the company said.
Through an online-to-offline model, Qingke offers a one-stop solution for the apartment rental process, from property search to maintenance services. The company claims to have adopted a wide array of internet-of-things technologies to achieve management and operation efficiency. It currently manages more than 70,000 units in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Suzhou, and Jiaxing.
"This is the first investment made by MSPEA in China’s long-term rental apartment market. We are optimistic about this RMB3 trillion ($478 billion) market segment and are confident in Qingke’s leadership team and the company’s highly automated operational platform,” Ryan Law, a managing director at MSPEA, said in a statement. “We believe that Qingke will remain a high-growth industry leader domestically and expand its footprint overseas.”
China’s long-term rental apartment sector has gained strong interest from PE investors recently as the government has shifted policy to encourage rental rather than home purchasing since last year. Recent activity in the space includes Danke Gongyu’s $100 million Series A round and Ziroom’s RMB4 billion Series A round.
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