Sequoia, Yunfeng lead $228m round for Chinese rice brand

Including a RMB300 million Series A in 2020 led by GenBridge, Shiyuedaotian, has raised more capital than any other start-up in the basic food materials industry over the past five years, according to a statement.

The company sources rice and grains direct from farmers and distributes products under four brands serving multi-level consumption needs. Shiyuedaotian has a retail presence online and offline, and it claims to rank first in its category on key e-commerce platforms. Compound annual revenue growth came to 60% between 2017 and 2020. It reached 80% during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.

Shiyuedaotian has 10 plants in northeast China for processing local-procured rice. Following the Series A, it started building modern supply chains to improve efficiency across production, logistics, and marketing. It also entered community group buying platforms.

"We have our front-end marketing platform and a powerful middle-platform. In the era of network collaboration and data intelligence, we are leveraging digital technologies to create a new business model for the agricultural internet and consumer internet," said Bing Wang, the company's founder.

Chen Xian, a partner and CIO at CMC, added that the emergence of Shiyuedaotian as a mid-to-high-end rice brand reflects the changing buying habits of a new generation of consumers in China. "The company has accumulated many online fans in the past 10 years and it is rapidly developing new retail channels while deepening the upstream supply chain," he said.

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• Greater China
• Expansion
• Consumer
• China
• Agriculture
• Yunfeng Capital
• Sequoia Capital
• China Media Capital
• GenBridge Capital
• TMT