The franchise collaboration SaaS industry is expanding rapidly.
Kaidian.cloud (Chinese: 享开店), a Chinese franchise collaboration SaaS service provider, recently completed tens of millions of CNY Pre-A round of funding, which was led by SIG Asia Investment and followed by the old shareholder Shunwei Capital. In 2021, Kaidian.cloud received tens of millions of CNY investments from Shunwei Capital, InCapital and Challenjers Venture Capital.
The money will be used to iterate the product, build the service team and develop new business.
From 2008 to 2018, the chain brands represented by restaurants in the Chinese market experienced a 10-year period of rapid growth. According to China Chain-Store & Franchise Association (CCFA) (Chinese: 中国连锁经营协会), the sales size of the top 100 chain companies grew from CNY 1.2 trillion (USD 166.69 million) in 2008 to CNY 2.4 trillion in 2018. The rapid growth of offline chain brands has also contributed to the rapid development of the franchise chain business.
After 2019, the impact of COVID-19 has made offline chain brands gradually realize the importance of risk diversification. Therefore, the form of franchise chain has become one of the key forms for offline brands to achieve market expansion and diversification of operating costs. Against this background, the franchise chain SaaS service, which aims to improve the efficiency of franchise management, has arisen.
In 2020, Kaidian.cloud's SaaS product was officially launched, eliminating the information gap between brands and franchisees through 6 modules: new store preparation, purchasing and ordering, operation supervision, marketing activities, learning and training, and customer services. Currently, Kaidian.cloud has served more than 200 chain brands, with over 30,000 stores online.
Dai Zheming, the founder of Kaidian.cloud, said that in the whole franchise chain industry, communication, collaboration and management between the brand headquarters and franchisees rely heavily on WeChat, the information is cluttered and unstructured, which can easily lead to conflicts and disputes. For brands, the services they provide cannot be left in evidence and quantified in communication with franchisees, leading to frequent situations of being defended and litigated. In addition, brand headquarters tend to pay more attention to investment and core supply chain;thus, in the aspects of operations, marketing and training, manpower or capacity is lacking.
The competitors of Kaidian.cloud include liansuo.qudao.com (Chinese: 渠道网), mxj.com (Chinese: 盟享加), u88.cn (Chinese: u88创业招商网) and hqjm.cn (Chinese: 环球加盟网).