Brief: Chinese e-grocer Nice Tuan raises $750m in Alibaba, DST-led round

• Chinese e-grocery platform Nice Tuan — also known as Shi Hui Tuan — has raised $750 million funding in a round co-led by tech giant Alibaba and internet investment firm DST Global.
• Other investors to participate in the round include DE Shaw & Co, Anatole Investment, Jeneration Capital, Dragoneer, CDH Investments, GGV Capital, Kunlun Capital, Franchise Capital, and Cygnus Equity.
• The Beijing-based app allows shoppers to form groups via its WeChat mini-program, enabling them to collectively buy farm produce and other groceries in bulk at competitive prices.

Why it matters:

Last year, Nice Tuan raised almost $450 million across four funding rounds, according to AgFunder and AFN‘s 2021 Agrifoodtech Investment Report. The last of these, a $196 million “Series C3” round in December, was co-led by Alibaba and Jeneration Capital.

Alibaba isn’t the only tech giant to stake a claim in China’s booming e-grocery space. Group-buying app Tongcheng Life has received investment from livestreaming platform Joyy and computing company Lenovo. Fresh produce e-grocer MissFresh – which was China’s top-funded agrifood startup in 2019, according to AgFunder data, and raised $306 million at the end of 2020 – is backed by Alibaba archrival Tencent.

“The community group-buying business model continues to iterate and evolve, and the entry of tech giants is bringing unprecedented competition [to this segment]. We firmly believe that [Nice Tuan] will be the ultimate winner thanks to its management team’s strategic vision, organizational abilities, strong execution, and determination,” Cygnus Equity managing director Jin Tao said at the time of the Series C3 round.