Miss Fresh Completed $230 Million Financing, focusing on the “Cloud Refrigerator” Strategy

Introduction: From IYIOU.com on September 20. Miss Fresh(每日优鲜), an e-commerce fresh product company, announced that it had completed $230 million dollars C+ round financing in March this year, with Tiger Global and Genesis Capital as leading investors and Time Capital as joint investor. This round of financing is mainly used for the expansion of storehouses in first to third tiered cities, brand construction and market development.

From IYIOU.com on September 20. Miss Fresh, an e-commerce fresh product company, announced that it had completed $230 million dollars C+ round financing in March this year, with Tiger Global and Genesis Capital as leading investors and Time Capital as joint investor. According to Xu Zheng, the founder and CEO of Miss Fresh, this round of financing is mainly used for the expansion of storehouses in first to third tiered cities, brand construction and market development. Starting from Q2 this year, the Miss Fresh launched the strategy of “cloud refrigerator”, and plans to invest 300 million yuan in “Convenience Shopping”, a self-service goods shelf in offices, so as to rapidly have 100000 points.

Zeng Bin, co-founder and COO of Miss Fresh, said: “in Q3, Miss Fresh will invest more funds and enhance the support for upstream quality fresh producers. Through one-stop service policy of ‘0 cost, 0 return and 0 payment day’, Miss Fresh fundamentally rebuilds new standards of agri-business cooperation and thoroughly changes weaknesses traditional retailers have towards suppliers in aspects of ‘high cost, random returns and long payment days'”.

According to IYIOU.com, Miss Fresh featured by nearby warehouses was founded in November 2014. Before this round of financing, Miss Fresh had completed another five rounds: $5 million dollars angel investment from GX Capital and Vison Plus Capital in December 2014; $10 million dollars in A round of financing in May 2015 from Tencent and GX Capital; 200 million RMB in November 2015 in B round financing from Tencent and ZXVC; 230 million RMB In April 2016 in B+ round financing from Grand Flight and China Growth Capital; and 100 million in C round in January this year. In this round, Miss Fresh had Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, ZXVC as leading investors, and Tencent, KTB of South Korea, Grand Flight and China Growth Capital as following investors.

According to Xu, the annual revenue is expected to reach 3 billion yuan in 2017, and the overall profit is already realized in six first-tier cities. While expanding the new market and gaining profits, Miss Fresh began to focus on brand and put forward the “cloud refrigerator” strategy. As for “cloud refrigerator”, Xu explained as follows: the advantage of Miss Fresh is: first, whole category, covering 1000+ SKU; second, nearby warehouses could realize the delivery within 2 hours and the future goal is half an hour. “Cloud” refers to Miss Fresh’s upstream industry chain, cold chain logistics and nearby warehouse technology. It is the refrigerator that delivers fresh goods to customers within 2 hours.

 In addition, in June, the Miss Fresh adopted “Convenience Shopping”, a self-service goods shelf in offices so as to maximize the use of existing warehouses and to offer better access to users. According to the introduction from the director of “Convenience Shopping”, Miss Fresh started from e-commerce fresh goods. Thus, compared with other self-service goods shelf, with electricity, Miss Fresh has advantages in supply chain of popular expensive fresh goods. Besides, 30% of the users are near the nearby houses which are located densely in offices and first tiered cities. As a result, when Miss Fresh operates self-service shelves, it is highly competitive both in the supply chain, infrastructure, and operations.

“We are optimistic about the future development of the fresh e-commerce industry in China,” said Wang Pengfei, director of Tiger Global China, “there is a huge market for fresh market and a long track for startups. Now, after several rounds of reshuffle, the pattern is gradually clear. Miss Fresh relies on the powerful advantages of the supply chain and characteristic nearby warehouse layout and can provide high quality goods to consumers with rapid delivery, which has high chance of standing out”.

Zhi-jian Peng, founding partner of Genesis Capital, said: ” We are confident on the huge potential of fresh e-business. With the post 80s and post 90s gradually becoming the main consumers, the penetration rate of fresh e-business is rapidly increasing. Because of the particularity of fresh goods, the time efficiency is quite demanding. Miss Fresh solves this problem creatively. It adopts a low-cost way to realize rapid delivery and has become a leader in fresh e-commerce and is expected to become one of the new retail giants.”

This article originally appeared in IYIOU.com and was translated by Pandaily.

Click here to read the original Chinese article.