Chinese antique e-commerce start-up raises $80m Series C

Other investors include GGV and United Media FoFs, which is backed by state-owned Shanghai United Media Group.

The company's name is the opposite of a Chinese idiom, "wanwu sangzhi," which means pursuing a hobby saps one's long-term ambition. Wanwu Dezhi was established in 2018 with the goal to bring antique trading online. An in-house product identification service is intended to address trust issues between buyers and sellers.

Wanwu Dezhi claims to have accumulated 200,000 registered merchants and 42 million registered users. According to Quest Mobile, the company's app had 5.1 million monthly active users as of September, the highest in the antique e-commerce industry. Wanwu Dezhi's average monthly transaction volume is RMB1 billion ($151 million) and it is targeting RMB10 billion in 2020.

The company has the capacity to handle more than one million orders per month. All items are shipped to a central warehouse equipped with surveillance cameras where they are identified and certified authenticators.

China Renaissance provided angel funding in 2018 and ZheFund led a pre-Series A round later the same year. GGV led the Series A in 2019 and Source Code led a Series B round this year, according to AVCJ Research.

"With rising national self-confidence, there are huge development opportunities in national style culture," said Ming Lei, an executive director at Huaxing Growth Capital. "Wanwu Dezhi offers a differentiated service to comprehensive e-commerce platforms by providing identification services and building an online community.” 

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Consumer
• Technology
• e-commerce
• China
• China Renaissance
• GGV Capital
• Source Code Capital