Chinese cross-border e-commerce platform raises $48m

Founded in 2015, Inagora is responsible for Wandou Gongzhu - also known as Wonderful - a B2B2C platform similar to Alibaba Group’s Tmall. It serves as a channel through which Japanese brands can sell products to Chinese consumers. The company also assists with market entry strategies. In 2019, Wandou has helped 70 brands establish a presence in China and became the exclusive agent for a dozen of them.

The company completed a Series B round of funding in 2016 worth $26 million led by World Innovation Lab (WiL), a US and Japan-based early-stage investor. Other early backers include Ventech China, ZhenFund, IDG Capital Partners, trading house Itochu Corporation, and Japanese telecom player KDDI.

Leveraging the support of Japanese conglomerates, Wandou has built up a network through which it can source products directly from brands, thereby keeping prices low. Sugi will help in this respect as well.

Wandou has accumulated more than 20 million users, of which 60% were born after 1990. It has over 40,000 stock keeping units from 3,300 brands available via its app, covering major categories such as cosmetics, nutritional supplements, and food. 

The company distributes packages to customers within two days, chiefly operating out of a 16,000-square-meter warehouse in Tokyo. For top-selling products, there is also a facility in Zhengzhou that offers next-day delivery. The start-up currently has 300 staff, including 100 in Japan and 200 in China.

Yongbiao Weng, Wandou’s founder, previously founded JWord, a leading Japanese online search company, in partnership with Intochu and another Japan corporation. The start-up was then acquired by Yahoo Japan and GMO. After that, Weng cooperated with Lei Jun, the founder of Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi, to set up Kingsoft Japan.

Weng said in a statement that his team has spent two years working with Japanese sellers on IT and logistics systems that can be integrated with Wandou. This is expected to significantly improved efficiency.

 

 

 

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• Topics
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