Huimin Announces New Round of Funding Worth USD 225 Million

Real Estate, Consumer Staples, Industrials Author: Linyan Feng Sep 09, 2019 03:00 PM (GMT+8)

Chinese leading B2B e-commerce platform Huimin closed a new financing round three years after its last fundraising.

Huimin warehouse. Image credit: Huimin website

Chinese B2B e-commerce platform Huimin (中商惠民) closed a corporate round of funding on September 9, raising CNY 1.6 billion (around USD 225 million). The company’s valuation was boosted to more than USD 2.24 billion after the fundraising.

The new round of financing was led by local investment fund Jinan Industry Development Fund (济南产发基金), with participation of existing shareholders Fortune Capital (达晨创投), GP Capital (金浦投资), Fosun Capital (复星资本) and China Renaissance (华兴资本).

Prior to the fundraising, the latest funding round of Huimin occurred on September 4 in 2016 when the company completed a Series B round of financing worth CNY 1.3 billion (USD 182 million). Furthermore, Huimin completed an extended Series A financing round in 2015, introducing six reputable institutional investors such as China Renaissance and Fosun Capital. Ever since its founding in 2013, the company has grabbed in total financings of more than CNY 3 billion (USD 421 million) from more than a dozen investors.

The Beijing-based private company focuses on small-scale community supermarket leaning on the internet. It employs an e-commerce platform to directly connect community supermarkets with factories and farms so as to enhance supply chain efficiency and lower intermediate costs. Additionally, the company also helps those traditional supermarkets embrace the internet for a wider sales channel.

By doing 2B business, Huimin has two distinct advantages over 2C e-commerce platforms. First, it has very low customer acquisition costs as their final customers are virtually customers of community supermarkets and are directly acquired by those supermarkets. Second, it has low logistics fees as compared to 2C players due to a much smaller number of supermarkets than end-customers.

Huimin’s new funding is the largest deal in Chinese FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) B2B e-commerce market in terms of size of a single CNY financing round, which further strengthens the leading status of the company in its arena. Proceeds from the funding will be used for commodity circulation, digitization application, ecosystem construction, and talent recruitment.