Tencent joins $300 million round for second-hand trading platform

58.com re-upped in the round which also included undisclosed new investors. Tencent led a $200 million Series A in 2017. Wei Huang, CEO of Zhuanzhuan, described the latest round as a matter of survival, given rising competition in China’s second-hand e-commerce segment.

Founded in 2015, Zhuanzhuan focuses on the trading of used mobile phones and books. The platform had more than 200 million users in 2018, including 50 million monthly active users. Quality-control services were set up in 2016 to maintain brand credibility and have since grown to include over 100 quality-inspection centers and 1,000 engineers. In 2018, 87% of Zhuanzhuan users chose to use the quality-control options, up from 69% in 2017.

This model is gaining popularity in China’s second-hand market. Plum, a second-hand fashion brands marketplace founded in 2017, offers compensation of three-times the sum paid to anyone who purchases an item that turns out to be fake. Plum received $20 million in August as part of an extended Series B round led by Japanese internet company Recruit Holdings.

Other competitors in this space include Xiangwushuo, which raised a Series B worth $65 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, GGV Capital, Matrix Partners China, and ZhenFund. The main difference between Zhuanzhuan and Xiangwushuo is that the latter doesn’t have a separate app. It operates solely as a mini-program within Tencent’s WeChat platform.

Zhuanzhuan has recently gained access to Tencent’s WeChat pay. The start-up has also set up on WeChat’s mini-program to better leverage its one billion users.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Consumer
• China
• e-commerce
• Tencent