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Chinese social e-commerce player raises $100m Series B

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Fresh Buddy, a Chinese social e-commerce app that focuses on fresh produce, has raised a $100 million Series B round led by Genesis Capital.

SIG Asia, DCM, and China Vision Capital also participated. The capital will go towards supply chain improvements, product line expansion, and building warehouses. It follows a $30 million Series A round that closed four months ago with contributions from SIG, DCM, and Welight Capital.
Fresh Buddy was established in April and incubated by Miss Fresh, another player in the fresh e-commerce produce space. The company differs from Miss Fresh in that it mainly targets consumers living in lower-tier cities. Fresh Buddy claims that people living in tier-three cities or below accounted for around 60% of the total retail sales this year. 

Much like fellow social e-commerce player Pinduduo, it has dedicated channels for sourcing and selling produce from villages. It also encourages customers to share the details of goods they are interested in on social media platforms. If a product sells well as result of their promotions, users can get up to 30% of the revenue. They also receive cash rewards of RMB100 ($14.50) for recruiting a certain number of additional users.

China’s fresh produce space has seen a number of new players emerge in recent years. Miss Fresh has gone through six rounds of funding since 2014, most recently raising $450 million from investors including Tencent Holdings, Jeneration Capital, David Selected, and Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, Retailer Fresh China, which has 100 stores in Anhui province, raised a Series B of $43.3 million in October, while fruit-focused Fruiday and Yiguo have also received funding.

 

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