China e-signature business raises $150m Series D

Additional commitments came from Grand Flight Investment and Invention Capital, while existing investors Gobi Partners and THE Capital re-upped, according to a statement. Evergrande High-tech Group is a subsidiary of Chinese property developer Evergrande Group, Grand Flight is an investment firm controlled by Hong Kong-listed leasing business Far East Horizon, and Invention is a venture capital firm established by a team from Ant Group.

ESign – which has previously gone by the name TSign – received RMB650 million in Series C funding last year led by Ant Group. Gobi and Eminence Ventures also took part in that round. A RMB150 million Series B closed in early 2018, with Qianhai Wutong M&A Fund taking the lead. Fortune Capital led a RMB45 million Series A in 2016. A pre-Series A of RMB10 million closed in early 2015.

Founded in 2002 and based in Hangzhou, eSign has expanded from electronic signature services into electronic contract services. It now offers a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that covers electronic signatures, contract verification and archiving, and online contract management and related legal services. Last year, a natural language processing tool was introduced to automate business agreements and even track the execution of contracts.

The company works with financial technology, healthcare, internet and e-commerce, manufacturing, and government clients. Customers include Alibaba Group, Sony, Huaxia Bank, Hikvision, and Budweiser. As of June, it had served more than five million corporate users and 270 million individual users, accumulating 12.1 billion signatures. The company processes an average of 20 million signatures every day.

ESign claims to have benefited from COVID-19 driven social distancing, with companies required to submit online documentation to the government regarding return-to-work certification.

There has also been a rise in cloud-based property transactions and screen-to-screen cloud-signing of commercial contracts. Earlier this year, eSign and AntChain – an Ant Group subsidiary that specializes in blockchain-based solutions – released a blockchain contract. Now available nationwide, it is described as China’s first blockchain electronic seal platform.

The new funding will go towards product and technology development, making the contract signing process more efficient, and promoting the use of electronic contracts on a large scale.

“ESign is a pioneer and the leader in China’s third-party electronic signature platform industry. Evergrande is a leader in real estate, having become the first company to deliver fully online property sales. Evergrande High-tech Group’s investment in eSign is not only driven by the company’s huge commercial value but by a desire for the companies to deepen their strategic cooperation,” said Yun Yan, a vice president of Evergrande High-Tech Group.

Other VC-backed electronic signature start-ups include Bestsign, which has received backing from Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners China, DCM Ventures, and Morningside Ventures. Bestsign merged with industry peer Fadada in 2018.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Technology
• Expansion
• China
• TMT
• Cybersecurity
• Shenzhen Capital Group
• Oriental Fortune Capital
• Gobi Partners