Warburg Pincus leads $93m round for China's Terminus

Existing investors Sequoia Capital China and Alibaba Cloud re-upped. The company raised a RMB400 million Series A led by Sequoia and featuring Alibaba Cloud in March.

Terminus – which was established in 2012 by a team that spun out from Alibaba Group – will use the new capital for product development and team expansion, notably the construction of its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering. There will also be a shift of application-level products towards a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, according to a statement.

The company's one-stop, closed-loop solution is intended to deliver better continuity and service simplicity to large-scale enterprises. For example, when a business brings offline sales online, Terminus can help integrate the offline point-of-sale (POS) system with the online platform. The goal is to offer multiple functions – membership marketing, omnichannel operations, procurement, and online sales – on top of the platform.

Terminus covers industries such as retail, real estate, energy, and manufacturing. Customers include ExxonMobil, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Bright Dairy & Food, Xinhua Bookstore, and property developers Vanke, Longfor, China Overseas Land, and Shimao. It also has clients in Southeast Asia, Europe, and the Americas, including US-based 99 Ranch Market, and Dubai-based Wenchao Group.

“The digital transformation of enterprises is a powerful engine for the development of China's digital economy. Relying on the three-tier product system of underlying basic software development tools [PaaS], low-code platforms and business-level software, Terminus continues to build flexible and customizable solutions,” said Yi Ding, partner of Warburg Pincus and head of China's technology investment.

Alibaba, Tencent Holdings, and Huawei Technologies have all launched middle platform solutions or PaaS solutions – which enable customers to collect and manage data, and run business applications offered by SaaS players.

Zhifeng Li, head of WeChat Work, Tencent’s enterprise coordinating tool, has compared his product to a house that comes equipped with basic utilities such as water and electricity. The “fine decoration” is carried out by partners who offer SaaS applications and smart hardware that integrates with WeChat Work.

Index Capital was the exclusive financial advisor of the round.

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

• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• China
• Warburg Pincus Asia
• Sequoia Capital
• Alibaba Group