Chinese Grocery Start-up MissFresh Privately Submitted Prospectus to SEC
MissFresh, a Chinese e-commerce grocery platform, privately submitted its prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a few days ago. The company is expected to go public in mid-June this year, for which it aims to raise more than $500 million.
As one of the earliest fresh e-commerce companies in China to feature front-end warehouses, MissFresh currently provides one-hour deliveries of fresh produce ranging from fruits and vegetables to instant and aquatic products, operating through a network of sorting centers and warehouses established in 16 major cities.
Several people familiar with MissFresh’s plans for a public listing told a Chinese IPO information media outlet that its supply chain and online platform are two highlights that the firm plans to present, instead of the business-to-customer model.
In the MissFresh Supply Chain Ecological Conference last year, founder and CEO Xu Zheng recounted that throughout the firm’s first five years it had focused on front-end warehouses, while in the second five years it will allocate more substantial time, energy and resources to the supply chain first.
On March 26 this year, MissFresh officially announced that apart from providing online-to-offline fresh products, it will build a digital platform for community retail to bring more energy to supermarkets, vegetable markets and small stores in communities.
The smart vegetable market business launched by MissFresh in the second half of 2020 has already expanded to cover Jiangsu, Anhui and Qingdao, with more provinces expected to be involved in the future.
With the use of a self-developed AI retail network, the firm made great efforts to help participants in the community retail industry to achieve digital transformation.
Due to the digital services, the vegetable market is no longer just a trading spot, but a community mall integrating food, catering, education, service and health. At the same time, the virtual cloud supermarket service provided by MissFresh can expand online channels for the brick and mortar markets.
SEE ALSO: Tencent-backed Grocery Start-up Missfresh Closes on $495M Fundraising
Since its establishment, MissFresh has completed at least nine rounds of financing, led by Tencent, CICC Capital, Jeneration Capital and Goldman Sachs, among others. The most recent two billion yuan ($305 million) in funding came from the Qingdao Municipal Government.
As for the firm’s competitors, Nice Tuan and Dingdong Maicai earlier this year raised $750 million and $700 million in D round financing, respectively, while the latter also has plans to go public this year.
