China e-signature specialist Fadada gets $139m Series D
Tencent Holdings, Centurium Capital, and ZWC Partners have contributed RMB900 million ($139 million) in Series D funding to Fadada, a Chinese e-signature and cloud contract service provider.
Founded in 2014, the company offers a full suite of e-signature products including one-stop software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, open application process interface (API) solutions for corporate IT and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. It also provides cloud-based services for local hosting of electronic contracts and associated process management.
Fadada claims to have made several breakthroughs within the China market. It was the first to offer a blockchain-based e-signature product with enhanced security features and the first to allow online data sharing and connection with judiciary bodies, thereby facilitating online dispute resolution.
COVID-19 has served as a catalyst for e-signature adoption in China and globally. Fadada’s average daily registered new users in early 2020 represented an eightfold increase on the previous year. The company quickly teamed up with Tencent to develop several light mobile e-signature apps offered through WeChat’s mini app and enterprise platforms and marketing SaaS platform Tencent Qidian.
Fadada raised nearly RMB80 million from local VC investors across three rounds between 2015 and 2016, AVCJ Research’s records show. In 2019, Tiger Global Management and Tencent led a RMB389 million Series C. This followed a merger with Bestsign, an industry peer backed by the likes of Tiger Global, Matrix Partners China, DCM Ventures, 5Y Capital, and Shunwei Capital.
The merger created two major players in China’s e-signature market, one supported by Tencent and the other aligned with Alibaba Group. ESign secured RMB1 billion in Series D funding last year from a group of investors that included Invention, a VC firm established by a team from Ant Group. Shenzhen Capital Group, Fortune Capital, and Gobi Partners were among the other investors. Ant led the company's Series C in 2019.
ESign – previously known as TSign – has a similar product portfolio to Fadada. Following a rise in cloud-based property transactions and screen-to-screen cloud-signing of commercial contracts, eSign and AntChain – an Ant subsidiary that specializes in blockchain-based solutions – released a blockchain contract. It was said to be China’s first blockchain electronic seal platform.
“E-contract and e-signature will play a more and more important role in the infrastructure of corporate activities in the future. We have witnessed and are deeply impressed by Fadada’s continuous evolution and growth under its CEO Xiang Huang’s leadership,” said Nick Tao, an executive director of Centurium, in a statement.
He added that the private equity firm would support Fadada’s growth ambitions, which include pushing into a wider array of user applications across different sectors.
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