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Key trends
There was a total of 110 transactions in the past week. 46.4% of these deals were strategic investments. Healthcare took the lead as the most popular sector, with 26 investments made.
Top Stories: VCs and Investments
Casstime (开思) is a prominent leader in China’s automotive aftermarket. It has just completed its Series C3 round, led by an existing shareholder, Source Code Capital. Sequoia Capital China, Greater Bay Area Homeland Investments Limited, and Shunwei Capital also participated in this round.
Founded in 2015, Casstime uses AI and data technologies to create a one-stop shop for the automotive aftermarket industry, blending features from Google and Meituan.
In an interview with 36Kr, the founder and CEO of Casstime, Jinag Yongxing, explained the impetus to build a tech-driven business model. With over 200 brands and 100,000 models, the local automobile industry has more than 100 million SKUs for components and accessories. This makes identifying parts difficult—even for maintenance experts. With a dedicated search engine, underpinned by voice and image recognition technologies, the time taken to identify the right product has dipped from tens of minutes to a few seconds, with an unparalleled 99.97% accuracy rate.
Top IPOs of the week
Sino-Ocean Services (远洋服务)
Share price: HKD 5.73 (USD 0.74)
Market cap: HKD 6.86 billion (USD 884.7 million)
Debut date: December 17
Sino-Ocean Services offers a suite of property management services for residential communities, commercial properties, public properties, and types of real estate. Co-sponsored by Citigroup and CICC, it debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on December 17.
The company operates three business units. Apart from general property management services—which encompass maintenance and cleaning—it also provides valued-added services. For example, it provides consultancy and engineering services for non-owners, and renders concierge services for a larger community.
Startups on our watchlist
Building and Construction
Xkool (小库科技)
Founded in 2016, Series A
Xkool has received strategic investments totaling tens of millions of dollars from SIG China and 5Y Capital—both funds co-led the startup’s Series A round. Existing investors Vision Knight Capital and Oriental Fortune Capital made follow-on investments. Xkool combines AI, big data, and cloud computing, upending the conventional architectural design process, improving efficiency and quality of the building designs and urban planning.
Consumption
Plum (红布林)
Founded in 2015, Series B2
Plum raised tens of millions of dollars in its Series B2 round of financing, led by the renowned Matrix Partners China. Unity Ventures and several existing shareholders also poured in funds. As a secondhand luxury goods C2B2C platform, Plum’s average inventory turnover runs at 45 days, with monthly GMV exceeding hundreds of millions of yuan. Plum has achieved a staggering fivefold growth in GMV and user count in the past year.