While not as gargantuan as some funding events in the industry recently, the office IT equipment rental service company has seen its valuation reach over CNY 2 billion.
Chinese internet giant Tencent (OTC: TCEHY) has injected CNY 50 million (equivalent to USD 4.3 million) into Shenzhen-based SaaS provider Bear Rental (小熊U租), which effectively counts as its Series C funding round.
Since 2018 the company has been through five funding rounds, valued at over CNY 400 million (equivalent to USD 57 million). The latest Tencent investment in Bear Rental led the company's valuation to reach over CNY 2 billion (equivalent to USD 285 million).
Founded in 2004 by its CEO Hu Yanxiong (胡祚雄), Bear Rental has a partnership with other giant investors, such as JD (京东), China Merchants Capital (招商局资本), Fortune Capital (达晨创投) and Shenzhen Guiding Fund (深圳市引导基金), while customers include big firms such as Tencent, Alibaba (BABA: NYSE), Baidu (BIDU: NASDAQ), Bank of China and Xiaomi (1810: HK), etc., according to the company's official website.
Recently, Tencent has carried out a considerable amount of investment, showing its optimism about the tech industry. In early December, Kuaishou (快手) completed a Series F financing worth USD 3 billion, with Tencent leading the round, injecting approximately USD 2 billion, which boosted the short video platform's valuation to USD 28.6 billion.
The tech giant is taking aggressive moves in the tech industry by investing tens of billions of dollars in different verticals. The healthcare sector was also blessed by these aggressive investments – the oncology database Medbanks raised a war chest in the private markets. The Beijing-based company completed its Series D+ funding round of CNY 1 billion (equivalent to 142 million), led by Tencent.
Following the investment trend of massive amounts flowing, we can expect more flows of capital into the tech industry led by Tencent as the company shows no intention in slowing down the funding spree.