7/1 TBC Insider Digest
View this email in your browser
Insider Digest 7/1/21: Why are Chinese VCs Investing in Restaurants? B2B Construction Materials Marketplace Xiaopangxiong, the Atlassian of China Ones.ai, Updates on Manner, Shein
Announcement: As mentioned last week, let’s talk about Edtech regulations for our weekly live chat! See you at FRIDAY 7/2/21 6AM PST / 9AM EST / 9PM Asia Time on Zoom!
B2B Home Improvement Materials Marketplace XiaoPangXiong Raises $400mm
Update: SheIn, Cross Border Ultra Fast Fashion at $46Bn Valuation
Update: The Post-Luckin Era Coffee Unicorn: $2Bn Manner Coffee
Why are Chinese VCs obsessed with investing in Restaurants?
I don't know about you, but I'm a little tired these days of reading all the funding announcements of yet another restaurant chain from Chinese VCs. Apparently, top deals have 30-40 VCs waiting to give termsheets. It’s that kind of market. It’s sucking away money (and attention) from more interesting deals, unfortunately, but I figured I at least wanted to understand the reason for all the enthusiasm. Like everything else, it is the prospect of a huge TAM and ready-to-go infrastructure.
I learned lots of things while researching this post, by the way, for one, that the largest chain selling Western food in China is not KFC at 7K stores but Wallace, at 18K outlets …
Oh and that the hottest new F&B asset is not a single restaurant concept, but a building remade into 1980s China in movie set like detail, selling you yes, Chinese traditional snacks, but also a healthy dose of nostalgia … Sequoia has put in money, would you?
B2B Home Improvement Materials Marketplace XiaoPangXiong Raises $400mm
This is a Softbank investment, so maybe it’s over-capitalized. It certainly looks that way relative to competitors, who are largely still stuck at Series A. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good reasons for why this company alone has been able to fundraise, as there’s really no public information about the business. Again, an incredibly large TAM but lots of reasons why digitization has been slow.
6/30/21 The Atlassian of China Raises ~$40mm Series B
This is still a small business but may get a big boost from Atlassian effectively exiting the Chinese market. Recently, Atlassian decided that not only would it stop selling Server versions of its product and force everyone to use the Cloud version, but that it wouldnot have local data servers for China going forward, meaning that Chinese users who want to comply with local data security laws basically can kiss Atlassian products goodbye.
Other Posts
Update on Shein, the crossborder ultra fast fashion unicorn on track to beat Zara by next year. Some new numbers have been leaked, placing it at a $25Bn gross revenue run rate as of Jun.
Update on Manner Coffee, the primarily pickup and better tasting but cheaper than Starbucks coffee chain that has been on a fundraising tear recently. Now at $2Bn valuation, its most recent investors are Meituan and ByteDance
And in case you missed it, Kujiale the home design SaaS company I wrote about two weeks ago actually just filed under the name “Manycore”
Welcome to our new members:
Kris - Estonian in Shanghai - She works at a SaaS platform helping brands & marketing teams manage their content on WeChat, Weibo and Douyin, and shared this great cheat sheet on China social media:
That’s it! Please check the forums for amazing contributions from our members and join the WhatsApp group!
Copyright (C) *|CURRENT_YEAR|* *|LIST:COMPANY|*. All rights reserved.
*|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|LIST:DESCRIPTION|**|END:IF|*
*|IFNOT:ARCHIVE_PAGE|**|HTML:LIST_ADDRESS_HTML|**|END:IF|*
Update Preferences | Unsubscribe
*|IF:REWARDS|* *|HTML:REWARDS|* *|END:IF|*