---
title: "Capital Winter, Yet Yijiupi Secures $200 Million in Funding from Meituan and Tencent - Why?"
description: "Despite the capital winter in the FMCG B2B sector, Yijiupi has secured a $200 million Series D funding round co-led by Meituan-Dianping and Tencent, with a valuation of $1.1 billion. This investment underscores the value of the FMCG B2B industry and Yijiupi's robust business model, as well as the strategic complementarity between the investors and the platform."
author: "新经销刘少德"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2018-09-21"
language: "en"
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# Capital Winter, Yet Yijiupi Secures $200 Million in Funding from Meituan and Tencent - Why?

> Despite the capital winter in the FMCG B2B sector, Yijiupi has secured a $200 million Series D funding round co-led by Meituan-Dianping and Tencent, with a valuation of $1.1 billion. This investment underscores the value of the FMCG B2B industry and Yijiupi's robust business model, as well as the strategic complementarity between the investors and the platform.

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The capital market is never short of plot twists, especially for FMCG supply chains that require heavy investment but seem to have a distant profitability horizon.
The aggressive entry of internet giants like Alibaba and JD.com into the FMCG supply chain has made capital more cautious about this track, and the industry has gradually seen fewer large capital injections. Especially after the年初 (early year) revelation that investors withdrew from DianShang HuLian and the platform ceased operations, FMCG B2B was widely considered to have entered a capital winter.
Yet just yesterday, Yijiupi made a strong rebuttal to this 'misjudgment' with a massive funding round.
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**Yijiupi Secures $200 Million Series D Funding Co-led by Meituan and Tencent**
On September 20, Yijiupi announced the completion of a $200 million Series D funding round co-led by Meituan-Dianping and Tencent, with participation from Source Code Capital, China Everbright Group, and others. This marks Yijiupi's return to significant capital raising after two years. With this round, Yijiupi's valuation reached $1.1 billion, officially joining China's 'unicorn club'.
According to Yijiupi COO Chen Shengqiang, the funds will be used for four aspects: nationwide regional expansion, platform category enhancement, strategic product R&D, and national warehouse renovation. The new capital will drive Yijiupi's 'nationalization, full-category' platform strategy, further strengthening its position as a 'new retail infrastructure'.
Founded in September 2014, Yijiupi had covered 83 cities across 26 provinces by the end of June 2018, with over 3,000 employees. The platform's monthly GMV exceeds 1 billion yuan, with over 40,000 SKUs on sale. The full-year 2018 GMV is expected to reach 20 billion yuan, with actual warehouse sales leading the industry by a wide margin.
Yijiupi has infrastructure and a vast user base formed by nearly 100 self-operated city layouts. In the top three categories by terminal sales, Yijiupi leads in alcoholic beverages, and its beverage warehouse throughput has jumped to first place nationwide. In May 2018, Yijiupi successfully acquired the snack food B2B platform 'Hui Jin Huo', initiating strategic layout in the snack category, marking another important step in advancing its platform strategy. Within just three months after the transaction, Yijiupi's food category transaction volume grew several-fold. Over the next two years, Yijiupi will further expand its national regional layout, combining self-operation with distributor onboarding to rapidly scale transaction volume.
2
**Why Invest in Yijiupi?**
**Before discussing this, let's look at Yijiupi's funding history:**
> December 2014: Received Series A funding of several million dollars from Bertelsmann Asia Investments;
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> September 10, 2015: Received 200 million yuan Series B funding led by Source Code Capital, with participation from Jinglin Capital, Bertelsmann, and Lighthouse Capital;
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> March 20, 2016: Received 200 million yuan Series B+ funding led by Yuansheng Capital and Zhongding Ventures, with joint participation from Source Code Capital and Lighthouse Capital;
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> May 13, 2016: Received a billion-yuan-level Series B+ investment from Meituan, specific amount undisclosed;
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> October 18, 2016: Received $100 million Series C investment from Jinglin Investment, Source Code Capital, Lighthouse Capital, Meituan, and Huagai Capital;
According to insiders, before the Series D round, Yijiupi had accumulated 1.2 billion yuan in total funding. The completion of this round also signifies that Yijiupi has become the company with the highest funding amount and the most funding rounds in the FMCG B2B industry. **Analyzing why Yijiupi has been able to gain capital market favor so frequently, New Distribution believes the main reasons are as follows:**
**1. The FMCG B2B industry has enormous value**
Objectively, Yijiupi's funding is closely related to the FMCG B2B track. In the 7 trillion yuan retail market, traditional grocery stores still account for a high proportion. The lack of online growth and rising traffic costs have made offline retail stores increasingly valuable. Traditional grocery stores can not only fulfill orders but also serve as traffic entry points for online transactions.
FMCG B2B can connect with small and scattered retail stores through the supply chain, continuously enabling digital transformation of these stores, laying the foundation for connecting with C-end consumers.
**2. Yijiupi's profit model is relatively mature, with strong sustainable development capability**
Yijiupi founder Wang Chaocheng
Yijiupi's development in recent years is evident. From a team perspective, founder Wang Chaocheng has years of experience in the alcoholic beverage industry, with rich manufacturer resources and ample industry experience. Industry experience helps Yijiupi avoid many pitfalls in product operations, while manufacturer resources help secure national distribution rights for many top domestic liquor brands, such as Yanghe, Guijiu, Hengshui Laobaigan, and Fenjiu, ensuring positive cash flow during platform operations.
In terms of development path, Yijiupi started with alcoholic beverages, then rapidly expanded nationwide, forming scale advantages in vertical categories. It then gradually expanded into beverages, reducing the proportion of alcohol in platform product operations to drive traffic. Later, through the acquisition of Hui Jin Huo, it established a professional snack food team, continuously optimizing the product mix to transition to a full-category platform.
In terms of operational model, Yijiupi adheres to 'heavy operations, light assets', leasing warehouses and delivery vehicles rather than building them, achieving high control over warehousing and distribution while effectively reducing costs, making it more flexible and efficient.
At the system level, Yijiupi insists on independent R&D of all process software. Not only ERP and supply chain systems, but also field promotion management, store management, warehouse and distribution management, and route planning, all independently developed to optimize internal operational efficiency.
In terms of industry understanding, Wang Chaocheng believes that the value of B2B lies in centralization, i.e., reducing product circulation links and reducing the number of times goods are handled. Secondary distributors have low delivery costs because their work processes and tools are non-standard, not because they are efficient. 'They deliver goods on electric bikes and don't pay taxes, so they have an advantage. But the problem is, from a societal perspective, they are inefficient. If everyone delivers on electric bikes, how do we solve urban congestion? In fact, they are not efficient; they are just low-cost.'
**3. Category and business complementarity**
This time, Meituan and Tencent invested heavily in Yijiupi. Besides the value of the FMCG B2B track and the platform itself, New Distribution believes the more important factor is the business complementarity between the two.
Meituan's core resource is its nationwide network of restaurant stores. Downstream, these stores connect directly to consumers via O2O food delivery systems; upstream, Meituan has built its own fresh food B2B platform, Kuailv, to meet restaurant owners' procurement needs. However, the alcoholic beverage supply chain, a major profit source for the restaurant channel, is not Meituan's strength. Through Yijiupi, Meituan can easily fill this gap in the alcohol category.
Another noteworthy aspect of this funding event is Tencent's strong entry. After its strategic investment in Hui Xiadan, New Distribution wrote an analysis that Tencent, whether for passive defense or to seize payment channel entry points and promote mini-programs, would continue to make moves in the FMCG B2B field. Since Hui Xiadan mainly serves lower-tier markets and has significant gaps in higher-tier cities, investing in Yijiupi perfectly satisfies Tencent's imagination for B-end users in high-tier markets. From another perspective, this also means Tencent's layout in the FMCG B2B field is basically complete. Other B2B platforms may still have value to be sold, but the window period is clearly not long.
Currently, mainstream B2B platforms have basically completed their nationwide layouts. The next stage is to continuously optimize product categories and structures. This means that vertical platforms with supply chain advantages in single segments such as maternal and baby, fresh food, daily chemicals, rice, flour, oil, and fresh food will be more likely to gain favor from capital and leading B2B platforms.
3
**Capital Concentrates on Leading FMCG B2B, Industry Shows Multi-polarization**
After years of野蛮生长 (wild growth), some poorly managed FMCG B2B platforms began to exit en masse in 2018. This means that even if new resources flow into the industry, they will tilt more toward leading platforms. The Matthew effect is becoming apparent, and Yijiupi's ability to secure massive funding during the capital winter is strong evidence.
**New Distribution believes that the development of FMCG B2B will inevitably go through three stages:**
> 1. A large number of platforms emerge, investment and financing events continue, and the industry is in a state of contention and fragmentation.
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> 2. The Matthew effect begins to show within the industry, and some B2B platforms start to fall behind.
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> 3. The industry undergoes high-level consolidation, leading to an oligopoly.
Currently, FMCG B2B development is in the second stage of transition. After Tencent's strategic investment in Yijiupi, the alignment of Alibaba and Tencent camps is becoming clearer.
Retail Tong, as the eighth column of Alibaba's new retail, targets community retail stores; while e路发 (e Lu Fa), leveraging RT-Mart's nationwide infrastructure, has achieved full profitability. Within the Tencent camp, Yijiupi leads the charge in digitally empowering grocery stores nationwide.
There is also a view in the industry that the 3+X competitive landscape in FMCG B2B has formed, where 3 refers to Alibaba Retail Tong, Yijiupi, and JD New Channel, which rank top in both coverage and GMV, and X refers to the numerous regional B2B platforms nationwide. This shows how fast the industry is changing.
During the transition, some falling behind does not mean the entire industry is failing, and the concentration of resources at the top does not mean other platforms have no chance to catch up. As Yijiupi founder Wang Chaocheng said: Competition in FMCG B2B is a long-distance race, testing endurance. The speed of development depends on balancing three factors: track competition, cash flow, and business quality.
Some industries have very short windfall periods, like bike-sharing, where competitors expand rapidly, and if you can't keep up, the war is over. But in the B2B industry, because offline store traffic is based on location rather than online, giants cannot monopolize. Even if there are a few best-selling categories among 2,000 SKUs, giants cannot kill you. Wang believes that 'fast' varies by industry, is related to competition, and requires balancing business quality and cash flow. If a company goes bankrupt, being fast is meaningless. When business and cash are stable, you must run desperately.
For B2B, quality is also crucial; this is an industry where burning money cannot buy user loyalty. Yijiupi started with alcohol, which has high per-unit gross profit, so initial business quality was good. With 80-90 points nationwide, selling only alcohol basically didn't lose money. Expanding into non-alcohol categories from this base is relatively easy. In contrast, B2B platforms that started with beverages have generally struggled.
For other B2B platforms, the lesson from Yijiupi's funding is that burning capital cannot sustain market growth. Continuously optimizing product structure, adjusting profit sources, and generating your own cash flow are the core competitiveness for a platform's survival.
**On October 23-24, during the Autumn Sugar and Wine Fair, New Distribution will host the '2018 FMCG City Distribution Logistics Conference'** . We will invite industry experts, FMCG warehousing and distribution specialists, and distributors transitioning to unified warehousing and distribution platforms to discuss and answer questions about future trends in FMCG city distribution logistics and practical cases of distributor transformation. We hope to bring you fresh insights and inspiration!
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