Compared with H1 2021, the number of events has increased by 9, yet the proceeds were lower than the previous CNY 19 billion, showing that investors are still interested in this field even when the financing environment is harsh.
According to third-party news portal Chanye Internet Vision(Chinese: 产业互联网大视野), in H1 2022, there have been 120 investment and financing events in the SaaS sector, with a total financing amount of over CNY 13.784 billion.
From the perspective of financing rounds, 17 events occurred in the seed/angel round, 58 in the A round (including Pre-A round and A+ round), 18 in the B round, 12 in the C round, 6 in the D round, and 1 in the E round. In addition, there were 7 strategic financing events and 1private placement.
Overall, there were 75 events in Series A and previous rounds, accounting for 62.5% of the total, showing that the capital market is bullish on the SaaS industry and still bets on SaaS start-ups even in a hard VC market environment.
In addition, although SaaS companies have limited mid and late-stage projects, the investment they received is usually generous. Take projects in Series D as examples, the six projects harvested CNY 3.069 billion, with an average of CNY 500 million each.
From an overall perspective, vertical SaaS companies are more favored by venture capitals. The hottest segment is the cross-border business, in which 17 financing events took place with a total amount of CNY 2.467 billion. With the digitalization and refinement of operations, intelligent enterprise services have become a new engine for the development of cross-border e-commerce. Investors have great interest in cross-border SaaS providers that specialize in station building, logistics, marketing and supply chain services.
In the first half of this year, many SaaS companies in the cross-border field, such as Shopslazza(Chinese:店匠科技), Dianxiaomi(Chinese:店小秘), eVatMaster(Chinese:欧税通), Tec-Do(Chinese:钛动科技), Coralglobal(Chinese:珊瑚跨境) and Haiguanjia(Chinese:海管家) have received new rounds of financing.
Marketing SaaS companies also show good financing capacities. A total of 14 financing events happened in this segment, aggregating CNY 2.148 billion. The beneficiaries include companies such as Sensors Data(Chinese:神策数据), IDEAMAKE(Chinese:思为科技), Lixiaoyun(Chinese:励销云), and Iyouke(Chinese:星云有客). It is worth mentioning that there were 3 events in the apparel segment, involving Zhiyi Technology(Chinese: 知衣科技), Style3D and LinkMore(Chinese:领猫SCM), with a financing amount of CNY1.463 billion.
Besides, there were several funding events in automation, retail, pharmaceutical, SCRM, architectural engineering, and design collaboration.
In the first half of 2022, 38 financing events exceeded CNY 100 million, accounting for 31.67%. Among them, Sensors Data(Chinese:神策数据), Shopslazza(Chinese:店匠科技), Dianxiaomi(Chinese:店小秘), Fenbeitong(Chinese:分贝通) and Sobot(Chinese:智齿科技) received financing of over USD100 million.