Chinese car parts supplier Casstime raises $50m

Sequoia Capital China and Source Code Capital co-led the first tranche - worth $80 million - last October. Casstime has raised nearly $250 million in funding since its inception in 2015. Other backers include Fosun RZ and Shunwei Capital.

Established by Overmars Jiang, formerly an executive at Huawei Technologies, Shenzhen-based Casstime positions itself as an internet-enabled solution for a traditional industry. The company offers a procurement platform, an offline store management system, and supply chain finance and logistics services.

The procurement platform is powered by a Google-style search engine that helps users find the unique part numbers by responding to vehicle identification numbers, standard product names, and colloquial variants. This is a useful function in China since the country does not have a single, industry-wide electronic parts catalogue. Workshops follow their own standards, which means there is a lot of scope for human error.

Casstime services 1.5 million cars per month through a network of more than 86,000 workshops across 366 cities. It sources products from 1,600 suppliers.

Private equity and venture capital investors have backed several start-ups in this space, with Mancando recently closing a RMB400 million ($56.6 million) Series B round led by Huaxing Growth Capital. The likes of Haoqipei and Baturu Technology have also received funding.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Technology
• Industrials
• China
• automobiles
• Sequoia Capital
• Source Code Capital