"What enables us to win in the market is our organizational form," said Shen Yueren, founder of Jiadian Ziwei, to 36Kr. 36Kr learned that recently, the compound seasoning brand 'Jiadian Ziwei' announced the completion of a nearly $10 million Angel+ round of financing, led by Hillhouse Capital, with IDG Capital, Yiling Capital, and existing shareholder Green Mountain Capital following. This round of financing will be used for marketing and promotion, brand building, and the construction of product and supply chain platforms. Jiadian Ziwei was established in September 2020. Founder Shen Yueren was previously the head of key accounts and new brands for food and beverages at Pinduoduo. Seeing the surge in domestic users' demand for cooking at home, Shen Yueren took compound seasonings as an entry point and secured a multi-million yuan Angel round led by Green Mountain Capital at the company's inception. In addition to rapidly completing capital reserves within two months, Jiadian Ziwei has also been iterating quickly on the product side. Currently, Jiadian Ziwei has three product lines, targeting the dining table and kitchen scenarios of young people. For the dining table scenario, there are the condiment sauce 'Mei Jiang' and the Japanese-style rice topping 'Fan Xiang Song'. The Mei Jiang series has launched four SKUs: Tangy Tomato Beef Sauce, Thick-Cut Chunky Beef Sauce, Charcoal-Grilled Tiger Skin Green Pepper Sauce, and Sichuan-Guizhou Assorted Fermented Chili Sauce, sold on major e-commerce platforms online, with a spring series of condiment sauces and three Japanese-style rice topping products to be launched in March. Image source: Jiadian Ziwei For the kitchen scenario, 'Ke Zhong Kitchen' has launched a hot pot base series, including Thai Tom Yum Soup Base, Colorful Yunnan Six-Mushroom Soup Base, Golden Soup with Fish Maw and Chicken Soup Base, and Sunny Tomato Rich Soup Base. In March, it will also launch cooking seasonings such as braising and stewing spices. Image source: Jiadian Ziwei The ability to launch products so quickly is related to the team's abundant 'factory library' at the backend. Shen Yueren told 36Kr that Jiadian Ziwei does not want a simple commissioned production relationship with factories, but rather shares the industry/consumer insights the team has with the factories best suited for production, jointly innovating new seasoning products that align with young people's cooking trends. This is also what makes the Jiadian Ziwei team special. Take the tomato soup and mushroom soup bases launched by Jiadian Ziwei as an example. Initially, the team thought these two hot pot bases would be used mainly for hot pot, but based on observations of consumer usage feedback on social media, they found that many consumers use these soup bases to make tomato vermicelli with shrimp, or cook dumplings in mushroom soup. Based on this phenomenon, Jiadian Ziwei feeds such needs back to the factory to iterate on product formulas, packaging specifications, and usage SOPs, such as lowering the saltiness of the soup base and making the packaging smaller and easier to use. In the compound seasoning market, catering to the diverse tastes of domestic consumers is a common challenge. To flexibly respond to consumers' scattered flavor preferences, Jiadian Ziwei places more emphasis on team-building mechanisms before polishing products. Shen Yueren introduced that currently, Jiadian Ziwei uses the product manager team as the large front office. They combine 'data input + super elements + base' to form product concepts. For example, recently there has been a surge in discussions about plant-based meat on social media (data input), so Jiadian Ziwei considers making a 'double meat sauce' (product concept) by combining plant-based meat (super element) with beef sauce (base). After forming an initial product concept, the backend supply chain, social media, and e-commerce teams vote to decide which product concepts will go to factories for production. "What enables us to win in the market is our organizational form," Shen Yueren told 36Kr. "Our organization is more like a game company. The product manager is a large front office, and each product line is a small studio. How much promotional resources you get depends first on whether you pass the review and the data from the MVP run." On the factory side, Jiadian Ziwei has accumulated resources from nearly a hundred factories in Shandong, Sichuan, Fujian, and other regions. On the channel side, its products have entered mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, as well as mid-to-high-end food-focused e-commerce channels like Miss Fresh and NetEase Yanxuan. It is reported that Jiadian Ziwei will soon begin expanding into O2O and offline convenience stores and high-end supermarkets to reach more consumer touchpoints. Dai Yuexiang, partner at Hillhouse Capital, said: "Compound seasonings is a hundred-billion-level market. With the rapid development of convenience and frozen foods, the seasoning market itself needs to create more innovative products that meet the needs of a new generation of users, providing a 'one-stop experience' for young consumers. In the process of mutual industry promotion, this market needs both industry veterans and younger teams that better understand new-generation users, reorganizing industry capacity in a way closer to consumers and continuously launching good products that meet user needs. We believe the Jiadian Ziwei team will bring consumers surprises from the table to the kitchen, from a quarter of an hour to every day, making life truly a little more flavorful." Source: 36Kr Author: Su Jianxun Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan once adopted.