China GPs back pre-Series A for software start-up Affine
Affine, a Chinese-founded and Singapore-based collaborative software start-up, has raised USD 10m in pre-Series A funding led by Redpoint China, China Growth Capital, and Sinovation Ventures.
Existing investor Miracle Plus also participated in the round. The proceeds will be used for product development and expanding the R&D team.
Affine originated from the idea of facilitating collaboration in academic research. Founder Jiachen He, who was working in university research labs at the time, wanted to develop a collaborative tool that could process data, write articles, and run code.
He teamed up with Chi Zhang, a serial entrepreneur who now serves as the company's CTO. Zhang previously led software-as-a-service (SaaS) projects at short video platform Kuaishou, including Qingque document, a cooperative software suite that has accumulated millions of users.
The name of the third co-founder, Affine's chief architecture officer, has not been disclosed. He goes by the username Sprite and is said to be a well-known open-source engineer and a key opinion leader in JavaScript, the mainstream programming language for the web.
Affine has developed products that work at the application level and at the infrastructure level.
He believes that infrastructure represents the largest opportunity for 2B services. Once companies reach a certain scale, they typically need to develop their own software or purchase automation tools. Otherwise, they would use multiple SaaS products for a single task, which would impede data flow and workflow.
To this end, Affine has introduced a product called BlockSuite that can be used as a middle platform, enabling companies to place personalised SaaS tools on top.
“As Affine deepens the research and development on collaborative tool products, the SaaS industry’s demand for infrastructure is getting stronger and stronger. If we can provide developers with a set of tools out of the box, SaaS start-ups can avoid the pain that I am going through. Maybe I can provide them with a set of useful ‘shovels,’” He said in a statement.
In addition, Affine launched an open-source community GitHub in August 2022. As of January 2023, the website version had accumulated 40,000 monthly users, of which 70% were based overseas.
SaaS was one of the industry segments most impacted by last year's market downturn, resulting in some companies witnessing significant valuation adjustments. According to AVCJ Research, PE and VC investment in China software fell from USD 2.8bn in 2021 to USD 2.2bn in 2022, with the deal count dropping from more than 240 to approximately 140.
MV Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for Affine's pre-Series A.
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