Shanghai-based B2B e-commerce firm MyMRO on Wednesday announced that it has raised hundreds of millions of yuan in its Series B funding round led by FountainVest Partners and joined by investors including Guangzhou-based state-owned GDD Industry Fund Investment Group and Hongtai Aplus.
MyMRO is a spinoff of Chicago-based industrial product supplier Grainger (NYSE: GWW), which in June decided to sell its China business to the regional management and Sinovation Ventures. After a restructuring in September, MyMRO increased its sales team and built out its logistics infrastructure with warehouses in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin. It “multiplied” its year-on-year revenue growth in Q4 2020 and Q1 this year, said CEO Lucy Zhou, without revealing further details.
“We are standing on the shoulders of a giant,” Zhou explained, referring to the company’s former parent. “This is an advantage no other company in this sector has.”
Grainger, founded in 1928, reported nearly USD 12 billion in revenue in 2020, mostly from sales of MRO (maintenance, repair, and overhaul) products, including lighting and electrical products, power and hand tools, as well as pumps and plumbing supplies. The company divested its Fabory unit in Europe and its China business last year to focus on the North America region, according to its annual report.
According to Zhou, the boom in the MRO sector in China dates back to about 2017, when state-owned companies were ordered to become more transparent in laying out their supply channels, including in the e-commerce space. No company in the sector currently holds more than a 1% share in the RMB 1 trillion (USD 155 billion) market, she added.
Zhou said her company counts China’s state-owned companies as clients, such as China Energy Investment Corporation, as well as China-based Fortune 500 companies, and multinational companies operating in the country.
Other companies in the MRO sector that recently raised capital are Tencent-backed Zhenkunhang and Shanghai-based Yesmo, which serves mostly small companies with an annual output under RMB 20 million (USD 2.8 million).
