China office decorating start-up gets Eight Roads backing
InDeco, a Chinese startup that offers one-stop commercial workspace decoration solutions, has raised $20 million in a Series C round led by Eight Roads Ventures.
German chemical producer BASF, and French construction materials maker Saint-Gobain also came in as new investors. Meanwhile, existing backers Source Code Capital and Gaolisheng Bamboo Investment Management both re-upped.
Founded in 2016, inDeco claims that its revenue has tripled in the past three years. It now has 260 staff and has served over 10,000 enterprises across 23 provinces in China, including co-working space operator WeWork, ByteDance Technology’s news aggregation platform Jinri Toutiao, and online used car marketplace Uxin.
The company leverages internet solutions to remove procedural frictions and reduce human workload. The standardization of the industry - plus the accumulation of relevant data - lays the foundation for further automation. InDeco already uses 3D scanning equipment to measure rooms - a task it claims would take two people twice as much time.
In 2019, inDeco launched an internal building information modeling (BIM) system that brings together engineering management, supply chain, and cost management functions. This has speeded up the delivery of price quotes and contracts.
Randy Wan, the company's CEO, said that first-quarter targets will be exceeded despite the coronavirus outbreak. "It shows that the demand is still there, and because of the disruption of normal decoration processes within some enterprises, efficiency is becoming ever-more critical,” he said.
InDeco has now raised more than RMB240 million ($34 million) across three funding rounds in the past 18 months. Source Code led a RMB110 million Series A in 2018, supported by ZhenFund, EBA Investments, and Hangzhou Chaosheng Investment Management. A Series B in 2019 featured the likes of Shanghai-listed chemical products manufacturer Red Avenue New Materials, Ideate Investments, and Gaolisheng Bamboo Investment.
Other VC-backed internet-enabled decorating businesses include Kujiale, which achieved a valuation of more than $1 billion following an extended Series D round in October 2019. The round was led by Hillhouse Capital. Victor Huang, the co-founder and chairman, told AVCJ that the company wanted to expand into office decoration from its core home decoration space.
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