China cloud database specialist PingCap raises $270m
PingCap, a China cloud database service provider, has raised a $270 million Series D round led by GGV Capital, Access Technology Venture, Anatole Investment, Jeneration Capital and 5Y Capital.
Other investors include Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Coatue Management, FutureX Capital, Kunlun Capital, Trustbridge Partners, Matrix Partners China, and Yunqi Partners.
Founded in 2015, PingCap's core product is TiDB, an open-source, cloud-native distributed relational database featuring real-time analytics. A relational database makes it easy to establish relationships among data points.
The company claims to serve 1,000 corporate customers across the US, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia. They include payments business Paypay and video platform U-Next in Japan, VNG and Zalo Pay in Vietnam, Southeast Asian e-commerce operator Shopee, and India-based Zomato and BookMyShow.
The initial idea of Qi Liu, PingCap's founder, was to build a distributed elastic database that could problem-solve. He turned it into a business aimed at programmers. Liu said that internal expansion was part of PingCap's DNA from the outset, hence the decision to focus on just one product. Prior to raising a Series B funding round in 2017, revenue was zero.
“To a certain extent, this is the opposite of the current entrepreneurial philosophy which focuses on growth without considering boundaries. The standard approach for many domestic software start-ups is to launch several product lines to create a product matrix, but the investment in each product is very small, and in the end, they might not be competitive,” he explained.
Fosun Group and 5Y - formerly Morningside Venture Capital - led a $50 million Series C in 2018. Existing investors, including China Growth Capital, Yunq and Matrix, re-upped. China Growth Capital led PingCap's $15 million Series B, which also featured K2 Ventures and Frees Fund.
UBS Group served as the exclusive financial advisor for the most recent round.
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