The Thaw continues: an investor from China invested in a Russian-Chinese ecommerce project for the first time
In December 2015, the online trading platform ToBox will be launched in Russia. Its development in our country will be funded by the Chinese venture capital fund Shunwei Capital . Next year, he will invest $ 50 million in ToBox.
For the first time Shunwei invested in ToBox in September 2015, the site representative said. This is the second round of investment. The funds raised will go, he said, to advertising, the expansion of the Russian team and the improvement of technology.
The Chinese project has existed since the beginning of 2015. On this site, proposals are being collected for the sale of various goods placed on various social networks, Russian showrooms and hand-made stores.
ToBox plans to make money on additional services, such as inventory management and logistics. It is not supposed to take commission from sellers.
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Next year, the turnover of the project should be $ 100 million, said ToBox founder Feng Lin. In the future, ToBox intends to open a business in other countries where e-commerce is actively developing: in India, Brazil and Australia.
The project has no direct competitors in Russia, I'm sure Feng Lin: “Yandex.Market” is the closest, “but we have a fundamentally new format”.
It’s still too early to compare ToBox with Yandex.Market, Pavel Alyoshin, the head of the latter, agrees: “We are aggregating 18,000 stores - from Yulmart and M.video supermarkets to small themed stores.” But Alyoshin is “happy for any new players”: there is growing where, in Russia, online sales occupy so far only 3.5% of the retail market; "In the US, according to various estimates, it is 9%, in the UK - 11%."
Feng Lin already has experience working with clients from Russia - he was a partner of the Chinese Internet site OSell , where Russian entrepreneurs are buying Chinese goods for resale.
Now 70% of ToBox is owned by Feng Lin, 20% by the Russian project team, 8% by Shunwei Capital and 2% by Chinese mobile device manufacturer Xiaomi, he says. Shunwei will participate in the next rounds of funding, promises vice president of Shunwei Li Wei.
Under the management of Shunwei - assets of $ 1.75 billion and 1 billion yuan, the newspaper Vedomosti reports. The company has invested mainly in startups related to e-commerce, social media, medical and educational technologies, online services for the financial, automotive markets and so on.
Previously, Shunwei had never invested in projects operating in the Russian market. However, the Russian e-commerce market has “very large growth potential,” and ToBox has a “unique project” with a good team, explains Lee Wei.
Until now, the runet has not heard of major transactions involving Chinese venture capital, says Alexander Turkot, managing partner of the Maxfield Capital fund: “Chinese, like any other investors, are constrained by macroeconomic factors.” Given that the founder of ToBox and himself a native of China, this is most likely a single transaction, he believes.
Until now, Chinese investors have not been seen in Russian Internet projects, agrees Gleb Davidyuk, managing partner of iTech Capital . The situation could have been changed by the warming of relations between Russia and China in recent years, he notes. “It is obvious that our country has a large and capacious market for the Chinese, and, given the geopolitical situation, now there will be more opportunities for them in Russia than a few years ago,” Gleb Davidyuk summarizes.
Commercial Director of ZhelDorEkspeditsiya Evgeny Mozhaev believes that Russia, despite the economic crisis, remains a promising sales market, but the Chinese are losing their competitive price advantage due to long-term delivery.
However, Chinese online retailers do not plan to stop expansion in Russia. At the end of October, a competitor to AliExpress in Russia, JD.com , a large Chinese online retailer, announced that it expects to occupy 60% of the Russian market for online commerce in the future.
In early September, Megamind wrote that Russian Post and China Post signed a cooperation agreement. At the same time, the heads of the postal companies of Russia (Dmitry Strashnov) and China (Li Guohua) signed an agreement on the launch of two joint projects. “This decision will contribute to the further growth of commodity turnover between the countries and the development of the transit potential of Russia,” the official report of Pochta said.
In October, the government of the Chinese province of Heilongjiang proposed the creation of an e-commerce hub on the territory of the free port of Vladivostok. Today in Russia, postal items are processed at logistics hubs in Yekaterinburg, Blagoveshchensk, Moscow and Novosibirsk.
Last year, trade between Russia and China increased by 6.8%, to $ 95.3 billion. This was reported by the State Customs Administration of China. Russia's exports to the PRC grew by 4.9%, to $ 41.6 billion, imports from the PRC — by 8.2%, to $ 53.7 billion. E-commerce market participants predict that in 2015 the total volume of online commerce between countries will reach $ 36 billion.
For the first time Shunwei invested in ToBox in September 2015, the site representative said. This is the second round of investment. The funds raised will go, he said, to advertising, the expansion of the Russian team and the improvement of technology.
The Chinese project has existed since the beginning of 2015. On this site, proposals are being collected for the sale of various goods placed on various social networks, Russian showrooms and hand-made stores.
ToBox plans to make money on additional services, such as inventory management and logistics. It is not supposed to take commission from sellers.
')
Next year, the turnover of the project should be $ 100 million, said ToBox founder Feng Lin. In the future, ToBox intends to open a business in other countries where e-commerce is actively developing: in India, Brazil and Australia.
The project has no direct competitors in Russia, I'm sure Feng Lin: “Yandex.Market” is the closest, “but we have a fundamentally new format”.
It’s still too early to compare ToBox with Yandex.Market, Pavel Alyoshin, the head of the latter, agrees: “We are aggregating 18,000 stores - from Yulmart and M.video supermarkets to small themed stores.” But Alyoshin is “happy for any new players”: there is growing where, in Russia, online sales occupy so far only 3.5% of the retail market; "In the US, according to various estimates, it is 9%, in the UK - 11%."
Feng Lin already has experience working with clients from Russia - he was a partner of the Chinese Internet site OSell , where Russian entrepreneurs are buying Chinese goods for resale.
Now 70% of ToBox is owned by Feng Lin, 20% by the Russian project team, 8% by Shunwei Capital and 2% by Chinese mobile device manufacturer Xiaomi, he says. Shunwei will participate in the next rounds of funding, promises vice president of Shunwei Li Wei.
Under the management of Shunwei - assets of $ 1.75 billion and 1 billion yuan, the newspaper Vedomosti reports. The company has invested mainly in startups related to e-commerce, social media, medical and educational technologies, online services for the financial, automotive markets and so on.
Previously, Shunwei had never invested in projects operating in the Russian market. However, the Russian e-commerce market has “very large growth potential,” and ToBox has a “unique project” with a good team, explains Lee Wei.
Until now, the runet has not heard of major transactions involving Chinese venture capital, says Alexander Turkot, managing partner of the Maxfield Capital fund: “Chinese, like any other investors, are constrained by macroeconomic factors.” Given that the founder of ToBox and himself a native of China, this is most likely a single transaction, he believes.
Until now, Chinese investors have not been seen in Russian Internet projects, agrees Gleb Davidyuk, managing partner of iTech Capital . The situation could have been changed by the warming of relations between Russia and China in recent years, he notes. “It is obvious that our country has a large and capacious market for the Chinese, and, given the geopolitical situation, now there will be more opportunities for them in Russia than a few years ago,” Gleb Davidyuk summarizes.
Commercial Director of ZhelDorEkspeditsiya Evgeny Mozhaev believes that Russia, despite the economic crisis, remains a promising sales market, but the Chinese are losing their competitive price advantage due to long-term delivery.
However, Chinese online retailers do not plan to stop expansion in Russia. At the end of October, a competitor to AliExpress in Russia, JD.com , a large Chinese online retailer, announced that it expects to occupy 60% of the Russian market for online commerce in the future.
In early September, Megamind wrote that Russian Post and China Post signed a cooperation agreement. At the same time, the heads of the postal companies of Russia (Dmitry Strashnov) and China (Li Guohua) signed an agreement on the launch of two joint projects. “This decision will contribute to the further growth of commodity turnover between the countries and the development of the transit potential of Russia,” the official report of Pochta said.
In October, the government of the Chinese province of Heilongjiang proposed the creation of an e-commerce hub on the territory of the free port of Vladivostok. Today in Russia, postal items are processed at logistics hubs in Yekaterinburg, Blagoveshchensk, Moscow and Novosibirsk.
Last year, trade between Russia and China increased by 6.8%, to $ 95.3 billion. This was reported by the State Customs Administration of China. Russia's exports to the PRC grew by 4.9%, to $ 41.6 billion, imports from the PRC — by 8.2%, to $ 53.7 billion. E-commerce market participants predict that in 2015 the total volume of online commerce between countries will reach $ 36 billion.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/296794/
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