Tencent, Sequoia lead $100m Series C for China’s Smart Fabric

China Broadband Capital, a private equity firm focused on the technology, media and telecom sector, joined the round. Existing investors Matrix Partners China, IDG Capital, Vision Plus Capital and 10Fund all re-upped.

Founded in 2014, Smart Fabric has established a digital alliance for small fabric-manufacturers in China. It takes orders from global brands and connects with different manufacturers in areas such as spinning, dyeing and weaving mills. More than 90% of its revenue comes from fabric sales.

The start-up has set up a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system to coordinate various enterprises across the fabric manufacturing supply chain. The platform is able to cut the purchase cost for customers by 5-10% and shorten the delivery cycle by 30%, or 2-3 weeks.

Smart Fabric claims to cover 70% of the top 200 garments factories globally. Its clientele includes brands such as H&M, Walmart, Amazon, Hugo Boss, Armani and Calvin Klein.

This is one of the largest investments in the digitization of China’s textile sector. In November, Baibu, a Chinese B2B trading platform for textiles and fabrics, received $100 million in the second tranche of Series C round led by Tiger Global Management.

The differentiating factor for Smart Fabric is that it manages the factories on its platform, rather than simply providing the technology. The company believes that while the light-asset approach is more popular and easier, a more involved approach could have a bigger impact on the industry.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• China
• TMT
• Tencent
• Sequoia Capital
• China Broadband Capital
• IDG capital
• Matrix Partners
• Vision Plus Capital
• manufacturing