GSR, BAI lead round for Chinese industrial SaaS provider

Other participants include GGV Capital and ZhenFund. Black Lake raised its angel round from ZhenFund, China Growth Capital and IDG Capital Partners in 2016. A year later, ZhenFund and China Growth re-upped for the Series A, which also featured GGV, according to AVCJ Research.

Founded in 2016, Black Lake helps manufacturers improve operational efficiency through digitalization. Its software enables smart work scheduling, real-time monitoring of production processes, remote quality control, inventory management, facilities maintenance, and data analysis. There is also an online platform that allows clients to study data collected from factories using machine learning technology.

Black Lake claims to have served more than 100 medium to large-sized enterprises including China Resources Group, Anheuser-Busch InBev, HomeDepot, Walvax Biotechnology, and Macdonald's.

“The company has solved the pain points of many traditional manufacturers through SaaS services, which something few players have achieved in China. We have witnessed the company start from scratch to now being able to attract Fortune Global 500 companies from larger rivals. We are very confident it will become the leading company in the industrial SaaS space,” said Yu Long, a founding managing partner at BAI.

China’s SaaS industry was worth $1.3 billion in 2017, making it the second largest in the world, according to IDC. It is expected to grow by 37.5% over the next five years, reaching $5.8 billion. Other recent activity in this space includes a Series C round for human resource SaaS management platform operator IfChange and a Series B round for recruitment SaaS provider Moka.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• China
• GGV Capital
• GSR Ventures
• ZhenFund
• Bertelsmann Asia Investments
• manufacturing