China's PatPat gets $160m in Series D extension

It comes one month after PatPat confirmed raising $510 million across its Series C and D rounds. The sizes of the individual rounds were not disclosed, although they are said to have established the company’s unicorn status.

DST Global led the Series D, which also featured GGV Capital as well as General Atlantic and Ocean Link. The Series C was led by Capital Today China Group, General Atlantic, and the wealth management unit of CDH Investments.

PatPat was established in 2014 and received funding from IDG Capital the same year, AVCJ Research’s records show. SIG invested in 2017, and then Sequoia Capital China led a RMB300 million ($48 million) round in 2018. IDG and SIG re-upped, while FreesFund came in as a new investor.

The three founders, Albert Wang, Ken Gao and Meng Hu, are all graduates of Carnegie Mellon University who went on to work for the likes of Oracle and Amazon. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and has offices in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Foshan, as well as in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dublin, and Manila.

PatPat claims to be the world’s largest direct-to-consumer player in its segment with users in more than 100 countries and regions. It ranked first in the e-commerce category and ninth overall among Chinese overseas social media platforms in the final quarter of 2020.

There is a strong emphasis on operational efficiency, with the company leveraging a self-developed end-to-end supply chain that uses big data and artificial intelligence to track fashion trends and conduct data analysis. This feeds into product development, design, sales forecasting, and other functions.

Cross-border e-commerce platform Wish, which is also backed by GGV, has a similar approach. It connects Chinese merchants who primarily sell products through domestic channels like Alibaba Group’s Taobao and Tmall with consumers in the US and Europe. Wish raised $1.1 billion through a US IPO in late 2020.

GGV-backed Xiao Hong Shu started out by helping Chinese consumers buy overseas brands but has since broadened its offering. The company, also known as Red, is considered one China’s leading fashion and luxury e-commerce and social media platforms.

Other recent activity in this space includes a RMB100 million Series B for OrderPlus and a JPY5.3 billion ($48 million) investment in Inagora, which operates an e-commerce platform that sells Japanese premium goods to Chinese customers.

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