Internet group Tencent has participated in a $230m series C+ round for China-based grocery e-commerce platform MissFresh, China Money Network reported today.
Hedge fund manager Tiger Global Management and investment firm Genesis Capital co-led the round, which followed a $100m series C for the company in January this year.
MissFresh runs an online platform that sells fresh produce such as fruit, vegetables, seafood and eggs, and delivers them to customers within two hours, making use of a cold chain logistics network it has established in China.
The company’s service had 1 million monthly active users as of February this year according to China Money Network, which speculates that the latest funding may have been helped by several competitors running out of money and going out of business in 2017.
The funding will help expand a recently launched MissFresh service that involves the installation of vending machine-like snack bars in office buildings that use freezers to keep food cool. It plans to invest $45m in growing the number of machines to 100,000.
The January round was co-led by Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, the corporate venturing arm of electronic producer Lenovo, and Zhejiang Zheshang Venture Capital, and included Tencent, KTB Investment & Securities, Grand Flight Investment and China Growth Capital.
Tencent and GX Capital provided the first $10m of MissFresh’s funding before the former led its $31m series B round in 2015, which also featured Zhejiang Zheshang and unnamed additional backers.
China Growth Capital and Yuanyi Capital subsequently invested $36m in an April 2016 series B+ round. MissFresh has now raised approximately $407m in funding since it ws founded in 2014.
– Image courtesy of MissFresh