Fadada is a leading e-signature and cloud contract service provider in China. The company offers a full suite of e-signature products including one-stop SaaS products, open API solutions for corporate IT and ERP systems, as well as hybrid cloud solutions for local hosting of electronic contracts and process management.
Fadada is a pioneer in legal technology innovation. It was the earliest provider of block-chain based e-signature product with enhanced security features and credibility. It pioneered in building an industry-leading e-contract management system, which significantly improved the efficiency of the legal process involved in contract signing. It was the first to enable online data sharing and connection with judiciary bodies, including online arbitration institutions, online courtroom, notary offices and forensic evaluation centers, providing one of the most complete technology solutions for online dispute resolutions in China.
Fadada’s products are ISO27001 and ISO27018 accredited and its clients include leading Chinese and global corporates such as Tencent, Microsoft (China), Bytedance, Alibaba, Oracle, Meituan, Ctrip, Yuexiu Real Estate, Poly Real Estate, Xugong Group, Fesco, China Telecom, Haidilao, New Oriental Education and Xiao Hong Shu.
Genebox is the leading direct-to-consumer genetic testing platform in China, committed to provide accurate, useful and convenient genetic testing product and services to hundreds of millions Chinese consumers.
Since its founding, “Customer Centric” has been Genebox’s core principle and the company is investing heavily on consumer experience, including: building its own lab and software to ensure the fast and accurate delivery of DNA testing results; relentlessly expanding its competitive advantage by offering better product and technology; adopting an innovative, customer-oriented and low-cost marketing model.
Genebox’s mission is to help Chinese consumers access to and understand their genetic information, and live happier and healthier.
In the future, Genebox will continue to develop its consumer ecosystem, providing more content and applications based on users’ personal genetic data. In addition, Genebox will invest reasonable resources on DNA testing technology, to strengthen its long-term competitive advantage.
Beijing, February 11, 2022 – Centurium Capital, a leading private equity investment firm in China, today announced that it has become a signatory of the United Nations-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), demonstrating the firm’s continuous commitment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues and initiatives.
Launched in 2006 by the former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, the PRI has become the world’s leading proponent of responsible investment. It works to support an international network of investor signatories in understanding the implications of ESG factors and integrating these factors into their investment practices and ownership policies.
Luo Nan, head of the PRI China, extended a warm welcome to Centurium Capital. “In signing up to PRI, Centurium Capital shows commitment to practicing responsible investment. It is an important step in its continued ESG practice. The development of responsible investment is now growing rapidly and we look forward to more investors joining the journey,” she said.
David Li, Chairman and CEO of Centurium Capital, commented, “We are excited to join the leading international network to help promote the awareness and adoption of ESG best practices in China. ESG forms an integral part of our value-creation and ‘invest to transform’ investment approach, and we look forward to the partnership with the PRI to further enhance our ESG practices and bring positive impacts to our portfolio companies.”
Centurium Capital was founded in 2017 with the investment thesis of “invest to transform”. It has grown to be a leading private equity investment firm in China and manages both RMB and US dollar funds. Centurium Capital primarily focuses on China’s consumer, business services and healthcare sectors.
In addition to integrating ESG factors into the whole investment process, Centurium Capital has established its ESG committee consisting of IC members and directors from various departments of the firm. The committee’s goal is to drive a holistic ESG strategy and governance framework and oversee ESG initiatives undertaken at Centurium and companies within its portfolio.
Centurium Capital offers ESG supports to its portfolio companies, such as providing ESG training and ESG management support, sharing of knowledge and best practices, and encouraging appropriate disclosure of ESG issues.
January 27, 2022, Beijing – Centurium Capital, a leading private equity investment firm in China, announced today that it has led a consortium to complete a transaction to purchase an aggregate of 383,425,748 Class A ordinary shares of Luckin Coffee (the “Company”) from certain sellers (the “Secondary Sale”). Other consortium members include IDG Capital and Ares SSG Capital Management.
The sellers are affiliates of and were formerly controlled by certain former management members of the Company and their families, and were ordered to be wound up and are currently in liquidation pursuant to an order of the Grand Court of the Cayman Islands and pursuant to orders of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in the High Court of Justice of the British Virgin Islands (the “BVI Court”). The joint liquidators appointed in respect of the sellers have exercised their statutory powers to enter into definitive documents to give effect to the Secondary Sale. On January 17, 2022, the BVI Court sanctioned transactions that form part of the Secondary Sale, as required by the securities purchase agreement that gave effect to the Secondary Sale.
The Board of Directors and joint provisional liquidators of Luckin Coffee have determined the Secondary Sale to be in the long-term best interest of the Company, and accordingly approved the transaction.
Upon the closing of the Secondary Sale and after taking account of its previous investments, Centurium Capital has become the controlling shareholder of Luckin Coffee, holding more than 50% of the voting interest of the Company.
Statement from Centurium Capital:
“We are committed to supporting our portfolio companies to build sustainable business models, robust and transparent corporate governance and responsible management systems, and we will continue to support Luckin’s long-term growth and development.”
Centurium Capital is a leading private equity investment firm in China, with primary focuses on China’s consumer, business services and healthcare sectors.
GOUMEE is a tech-driven online brand operation and marketing service provider in fashion industry. It focuses on live-streaming e-commerce operation and influencer marketing, helping brands to acquire customers in new traffic channels and developing new products. GOUMEE is a first-tier live-streaming e-commerce Douyin Partner and a top notch service provider in both T-mall and Douyin.
November 16, 2021, Hong Kong – The Centurium Capital-led privatization of leading plasma-based biopharmaceutical company China Biologic Products Holdings Inc. (“China Biologic” or the “Company”) was awarded “Deal of the Year – Large Cap” by Asia Venture Capital Journal (AVCJ) at its annual award ceremony on November 15 in Hong Kong.
A buyer consortium led by Centurium Capital first announced its indicative proposal to privatize the Nasdaq-listed China Biologic (Nasdaq: CBPO) on September 18, 2019. On November 19, 2020, the two sides had reached an agreement for the consortium to purchase the outstanding shares not already owned by the consortium members at US$120 per share, implying a valuation of US$4.76 billion for the Company. The consortium members also included CITIC Capital, Hillhouse Capital, Temasek and the management team. The privatization transaction was closed on April 20, 2021.
Zhixing Chen, Managing Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “It was a long journey for us to close the China Biologic transaction, which is one of the largest privatization deals in China’s healthcare space in recent years. I want to take this opportunity to thank our investors, our team and friends who supported us along the way. Going forward, we will continue to work closely with the management team at China Biologic and bring the Company to the next level.”
Centurium Capital first invested in China Biologic in August 2018. Founded in 2002, China Biologic Products is a leading fully integrated plasma-based biopharmaceutical company in China. The Company’s products are used as critical therapies during medical emergencies and for the prevention and treatment of life-threatening diseases and immune-deficiency related diseases. China Biologic is headquartered in Beijing and manufactures over 20 different dosage forms of plasma products.
China Biologic is also engaged in the sale of medical devices, primarily regenerative medical biomaterial products. The Company sells its products to hospitals, distributors and other healthcare facilities in China.
Centurium Capital is a leading private equity investment firm in China and primarily focuses on investing in China’s consumer, business services and healthcare sectors. As a transformational capital provider with a focus on business model innovation and resolving structural deficiencies to unlock growth potential, Centurium pursues a hands-on and operations-centric investment approach to drive value creation and generate long term shareholder value.
November 10, 2021, Beijing, China – Meican (the “Company”), a leading Chinese SaaS-based group catering technology company, announced today that it has completed E-round financing of US$100 million invested by Centurium Capital, a leading private equity investment management firm in China. The financing is expected to enhance Meican’s capabilities and investments in product research and development, global customer acquisition, supply chain diversification, and human resources development.
Founded in 2011, Meican is China’s largest group catering solutions provider. The Company offers comprehensive catering solutions to corporate clients and their employees, including both on-premise and off-premise catering and SaaS solutions. It also offers SaaS solutions to traditional group dining players, including digital ordering, integrated payment processing, catering operation, corporate fee control, as well as reporting & analytics.
The Company’s clients include Bytedance, Alibaba, SF Express, China CITIC Bank, Pacific Insurance, SASAC, Peking University People’s Hospital and China Southwest Aviation University, and numerous others. Through its SaaS technology and innovative solutions, Meican has transformed and modernized the traditional group catering industry.
Statistics show that the group catering market in China exceeded RMB1.5 trillion in 2020, serving 670 million customers while growing at over 15 percent annually. However, the Chinese group catering industry is still very fragmented, with a CR10 (market share of top 10 players) of less than five percent in China, which is in sharp contrast with a CR10 of 60 to 80 percent in developed markets such as the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea. This demonstrates huge growth and consolidation potential.
Xiao Zhao, Co-founder and CEO of Meican, commented, “Thanks to increasing penetration of digitalization and demand for a better group catering experience, the industry is going through a profound transformation. We will continue to invest in the diversification and digitalization of our supply chain to further upgrade the overall industry infrastructure and solidify our market-leading position. With synergies from our core advantages in SaaS solutions and unique product offering, we are confident that Meican will accelerate its growth and expansion to further tap into the trillion-yuan group catering market.”
Gary Liu, Managing Director of Centurium Capital, commented, “Serving two huge markets of business services and catering, Meican has built a very unique business model and developed innovative solutions through years of hard work. We believe there is still a huge unmet demand from corporate clients and their employees for modern, standardized and diversified group catering services. Meican has grown significantly over the past several years, connected a large number of traditional catering service providers, and accumulated deep industry expertise. We are pleased to partner with Meican to support the Company’s expansion and help them to continue to upgrade their product and service offerings.”
Today, Meican’s products and services cover nearly 100 cities across China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuhan, and serve thousands of corporate customers and merchant partners.
Centurium Capital is a leading private equity investment firm in China and primarily focuses on investing in China’s consumer, business services and healthcare sectors. As a transformational capital provider with a focus on business model innovation and resolving structural deficiencies to unlock growth potential, Centurium pursues a hands-on and operations-centric investment approach to drive value creation and generate long term shareholder value.
Shanghai Innogen Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. is a science-driven biotechnology company dedicated to the research and development of innovative and affordable medicines for diabetes and other metabolic disease patients. Innogen’s pipeline in metabolic disease, including Type 1 & 2 diabetes, obesity and NASH, is independently developed and has global market rights.
Supaglutide, Innogen’s leading drug candidate, is a long-acting humanized GLP-1 receptor agonist. Currently under phase III trials for T2D, Supaglutide will be the first humanized long-acting GLP-1 drug that originated from China. Continuously increasing diabetes patient population and sub-optimal glucose control provides an enormous potential market for Supaglutide both in China and across the globe. Other indications for Supaglutide such as obesity and NASH are also under development.
March 30, 2021, Beijing – Yunxuetang (YXT), a China-based online corporate training services provider, has recently completed two series E rounds, E1+E2, within three months of each other, totaling $190 million. Venture capital firm Matrix Partners China led the series E2 tranche with additional contributions from Sequoia Capital China and Hundreds Capital.
The E1 round was closed in January 2021 and led by Tencent. Prior to this round, Yunxuetang received multiple rounds of financing from top-tier private equity managers such as Centurium Capital, YF Capital, SIG, Ximalaya, and Everest VC. After the completion the series E financing, Yunxuetang become a unicorn and best-funded corporate training service provider in the industry.
This round of financing will be used for AI technology and software product innovation, data center and IT center construction, content development and customer experience enhancement.
Corporate training has grown year over year, but it gained stronger growth momentum in 2020 due the COVID-19 outbreak. The pandemic resulted in an urgent need for digital transformation, and companies quickly shifted from offline training to online. As the largest and most comprehensive corporate training technology company in China, Yunxuetang has led the way in providing business digitalization solutions.
Yunxuetang, founded in 2011, offers end-to-end corporate training solutions including training infrastructure establishment, training materials development, training program maintenance, data analysis and vendor management to meet the increasing demands for more efficient staff training as Chinese companies grow and evolve.
China’s less-than-truckload logistics market, which sits in between express couriers and big truck operators, is ripe for consolidation. GPs have identified their favored players.
The recent $300 million round for ANE Logistics represents the continuation of a trend. It is the third large large-scale deal in 12 months in China’s less-than-truckload (LTL) logistics space, where capital appears to be coalescing around the three market leaders.
In addition to ANE’s round – which was led by CPE – SF Freight, the LTL arm of local courier giant SF Express, received $300 million from CITIC Capital, CDH investments and Legend Capital, while the likes of Boyu Capital and Hopu Investment piled into a RMB1 billion ($154 million) extended Series D round for Yimidida.
LTL operators occupy the logistics industry’s middle ground. They typically carry goods 30 kilograms and 3 tons by road; too big for the express parcel players and too small for full-truck-load carriers. “You can distinguish between the three segments in last-mile delivery by vehicle type,” says Jeff Wang, chairman of ANE. “It’s motorcycles for general parcels, vans for LTL, and trucks are full-truck-load.”
Buoyed by e-commerce, express is the most developed segment and the most concentrated. The likes of SF Express, YTO Express, ZTO Express, Yunda Express and STO Express dominate in terms of market share. By comparison, LTL and full-truck-load remain fragmented.
“The market share of top LTL companies is only in the single digits, the market is in urgent need of consolidation. Traditionally, mom-and-pop shops and provincial and regional players have occupied the mainstream, but they have a relatively low standards in providing complex logistics routes, information systems and service quality. Emerging nationwide logistics firms are replacing them,” says Michael Chen, a partner Centurium Capital.
He compares the opportunity set in LTL now to that in the express segment several years ago. In 2019, Centurium committed $300 million to ANE.
Cornering C2M
ANE claims to be the number one LTL player by shipment volume, with most of its customers coming from manufacturing, distribution, and e-commerce. While e-commerce has spurred express business, it only accounts for 20% of the ANE’s orders. Flexible manufacturing – the consumer-to-manufacturer (C2M) model, characterized by small batch, high frequency deliveries – is the real growth driver.
“Today, a factory delivers to thousands of stores directly instead of to 10 distributors. The key to this evolution is to remove the inventory and increase the circulation efficiency of supply chains,” says Wang.
ANE is positioning itself as a one-stop-shop to capitalize on this trend. It plans to extend service coverage to mini parcels as small as 15 kg, while simultaneously strengthening its network in villages and small towns. “The competitive edge is no longer making timely shipments to Guangzhou and Shanghai. It’s whether you deliver fast enough to Aksu or Qiqihar while keeping your costs low,” says Wang.
The company operates 140 transhipment centers and manages over 26,000 partner outlets and agents covering 96% of China’s townships. More than 4,000 vans are sent out every day. Its daily peak truckload has surpassed 50,000 tons.
However, this ascent has not been trouble-free. ANE entered the LTL space in 2010 and became the market leader in 2016. It decided to expand into express services the same year. Challenging the incumbent giants turned out to be a strategic mistake. ANE entirely exited the segment in early 2019 and refocused on LTL.
“We backed ANE because we invest in market leaders. We’ve known the management team for a long time, and we have confidence in them. The company has further solidified its leadership position in LTL in the past few years,” says Chen.
ANE’s immediate priorities include improving operational efficiency. If a typical truck has capacity of 130 cubic meters and carries 30 tons, the goal is to make full use of the space without wasting weight capacity. But geographical demand patterns are uneven. Xi’an is known for producing apples and a truckload of apples weighs less than 30 tons. ANE therefore offers discounts on shipments of heavy goods. A similar promotion for light goods would be launched in a region with high ironware output.
“We have accumulated a lot of data and our system automatically generates price quotations for different places during different seasons. Our full-load-rate could be 5-10% higher than competitors, but I get a 40% increase in yearly volume through cost advantages,” says Wang.
Profit over scale
ANE claims to be the only LTL company in China to realize a profit, generating annual net income of several hundred million renminbi. Wang stresses that profit is more important than scale.
“The operational efficiency gap between the top LTL players will continue to widen, just like in express,” he explains. “Scale rankings mislead investors. When the evaluation model moves from price-to-sales to price-to-earnings, two players might be of similar scale but one has a 20-30x larger market capitalization than the other.”
ZTO and Best, both of which are US-listed, offer a good example. They are of similar scale: In the first half of 2020, ZTO posted revenue of RMB10.3 billion to Best’s RMB13.9 billion. However, ZTO generated a net profit of RMB1.8 billion, while Best had a loss of RMB767 million. Best priced its IPO at $10 per share in 2017 and now trades at $2.30 for a market capitalization of $883 million. ZTO is worth $29.7 billion, having seen its stock price rise 80% to $35 since its 2016 offering.
ANE’s cost control solution is to pursue a franchise model, with franchisees mainly responsible for last-mile-delivery and collecting returned goods from customers. “ANE pioneered the franchise model in LTL, and it’s a proven model,” Chen says. “It’s actually a platform approach. Each franchisee’s IT system is deeply integrated with ANE, so delivery speed and routes can be monitored.”
However, franchising doesn’t necessarily work for intercity fleets. At present, 40% of ANE’s transportation capacity is operated directly and the goal is to reach 70% by the end of this year. This initiative is expected to deliver further cost savings by increasing mileage per truck by 30%. The key is that a centralized fleet can operate across multiple routes, while a collection of third-party service providers cannot.
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