Tiger leads $50m round for China shared kitchen provider
Tiger Global has led a $50 million Series C round for Panda Selected, a Chinese provider of shared kitchen services for food delivery start-ups.
Existing investors DCM and GenBridge Capital also participated. GenBridge co-led the company’s Series B round in 2018 alongside Vision Knight Capital Partners, with DCM and Red Star Macalline Furniture Group contributing as well.
Panda Selected was founded in 2016 and operates 120 shared kitchen locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Shenzhen. Its kitchens are intended for use by companies focused exclusively on delivery and catering, and provide enough space for 15-20 restaurants along with brand promotion and supply chain management services. It partners with more than 800 domestic catering brands including Luckin Coffee, hot pot chain Haidilao, and pizza chain Tube Station.
“In the past three years, Panda Selected has rapidly developed to keep pace with the transforming catering industry in China,” said Li Haipeng, founder and CEO of Panda Selected, in a statement. “With this round of financing we expect to further extend our leadership position by rapidly expanding to serve more cities and core business districts and continuing to improve services and help our merchants operate better and faster.”
Food delivery is a major part of China’s booming local services space, with internet giants Alibaba Group and Meituan-Dianping both focusing on the segment in recent years. Alibaba acquired food delivery platform Ele.me last year in a transaction that valued the company at $9.5 billion and later merged the company with its local services platform Koubei, while Meituan-Dianping reported that food delivery accounted for 62% of revenue for 2017.
Similar trends have been seen around the world, with the shared kitchen model emerging in a number of markets. In India, food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy recently launched the Swiggy Access platform to provide kitchen space to its restaurant partners. CloudKitchens, a similar US-based start-up founded by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, is reportedly also planning to enter China soon.
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