Qiming leads Series B-plus for China's Jingling

IDG Capital also took part alongside several existing investors. The company has completed four funding rounds this year. The Series B took place in July and was led by Tencent Holdings, with participation from IDG, K2VC, and Vision Capital.

In 2017, Jingling launched Hao Yi Ku, an e-commerce platform that markets apparel and luggage products to customers in tier-two cities and below in China. It has since expanded the range to include home appliances, cosmetics, and child and maternity products. Jingling claims to have helped several brands achieve daily sales totaling millions of renminbi.

A mobile app called Shuaishuai Baobao went live in June of this year. It is intended to encourage consumer participation by offering discounted goods and commissions in return for completing certain "tasks,” such as sharing products sold on the app through their social media accounts.

“Our values have always been that social commerce industry needs participation from both customers and merchants. We want to play the role as a connector between the two parties to make the online shopping experience more entertaining,” said Qiangqiang Wu, Jingling's CEO and founder, according to a statement.

China’s social e-commerce market will be worth more than $150 billion by 2020, with 24 million merchants active in the space, according to Advangent, an e-commerce marketing firm. This would still only be a fraction of the country's total e-commerce market, which Goldman Sachs estimates will reach $1.7 trillion by 2020.

Other major players in the space including three-year-old Pinduoduo, which raised $1.63 billion in the second-biggest US float by a Chinese company this year. Prior to its IPO, the company received more than $3.1 billion in funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital China, Tencent, Gaorong Capital, and IDG.

 

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Early-stage
• China
• e-commerce
• Tencent
• Qiming Venture Partners
• TMT