China fabrics platform Baibu raises $300m
Baibu, a Chinese B2B trading and services platform for the textiles and fabrics industry, has raised a $300 million Series D round led by DST Global.
Additional investors include CICC Capital, Source Code Capital, Tiger Global Management, Yunqi Capital, Chengwei Capital, and Bull Capital Partners. It is the largest-ever funding round in China's fabric sector.
Baibu received a $100 million tranche of Series C funding in November led by Tiger Global Management in November following a $30 million Series C investment in August. The company received angel funding and a Series A round from Source Code in 2015 and 2016, respectively. This was followed by an initial Series B commitment of $10 million led by Chengwei.
Baibu was founded in 2014 by a team whose members previously worked for the likes of Alibaba Group, Meituan-Dianping, and e-commerce company Vipshop, as well as leading groups in the textiles industry. It recorded revenue of RMB10 billion ($1.4 billion) in 2019.
The company has expanded from a trading platform into offering a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform to small fabric manufacturers. The cloud-based platform has serviced 100,000 textile machines, representing 8% of the industry's capacity in China. Baibu plans to cover 400,000 machines in 2020, representing 26% of the overall capacity.
Baibu's competitor, Smart Fabric, received a $100 million Series C jointly led by Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital China in September. Smart Fabric started out as a software provider but has also moved into other services. Its technology brings together 2,000 small-scale textile manufacturers and serves 200 domestic and global brands, including H&M, Walmart and Calvin Klein.
"We have built China's first cloud-based factory. We provide a connected ERP [enterprise resource planning] and MES [manufacturing execution systems] solutions to our member factories – they are normally disconnected – so that the orders are linked automatically to production." Charles Fu, Smart Fabric's founder, told AVCJ in a previous interview. "When we receive an order, we dismantle it into dozens of procedures, match these procedures with specific machines in our network, and issue production orders to different factories."
More on Greater China
Latest News
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...
Singapore fintech start-up LXA gets $10m seed round
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has led a USD 10m seed round for Singapore’s LXA, a financial technology start-up launched by a former Asia senior executive at The Blackstone Group.
India's InCred announces $60m round, claims unicorn status
Indian non-bank lender InCred Financial Services said it has received INR 5bn (USD 60m) at a valuation of at least USD 1bn from unnamed investors including “a global private equity fund.”
Insight leads $50m round for Australia's Roller
Insight Partners has led a USD 50m round for Australia’s Roller, a venue management software provider specializing in family fun parks.