Danke Gongyu (蛋壳公寓), a Chinese apartment rental platform, has closed a US$70 million Series B+ round led by Tiger Global, with participation from existing investors China Media Capital, Gaorong Capital, Joy Capital, Youjin Investment Management, Vision Plus Capital, and BAI.
KrASIA has previously reported that Danke Gongyu has banked US$100 million in a Series B round in February.
Founded in January 2015, the startup aggregates apartments on its platform, targeting young white-collar workers.
According to the startup, it has now established its presence in eight Chinese cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, aggregating over 120k apartment on its platform. The startup aims to add 180k more apartments to its platform, which will make a total of 300k apartments under its name, in a push for an expansion to more first-tier Chinese cities.
Last month, a local media reported that Danke Gongyu was blamed for making tenants pay rent in installments without explicit consent.
In China, the rental property market is expected to boom. With the skyrocketing house prices, more Chinese young people tend to rent a house instead, and the Chinese government has introduced supportive initiatives. According to a report by Lianjia, which operates one of the largest online residential property sales and rental platform in China, China’s property rental market is estimated to surge to RMB 4.6 trillion (approx. US$ 720 billion) by 2030.
In China, the biggest property rental services startup Ziroom, a subsidiary of Lianjia, claims that it operates 400k apartments and is serving over 1 million tenants. It raised RMB 4 billion (approx. US$626 million) in January this year to fuel its national expansion. Other companies, including Danke Gongyu, Qingke365, Vlinker, and UOKO, remain relatively small.
Observation:
The Chinese apartment rental market is still in its infancy, and the fierce competition among companies is not expected to happen soon.
Companies in the field struggle to differentiate themselves as they all adopt similar business models and target similar customer groups. The key to success lies in the company’s ability to aggregate more apartments, size of capital available, as well as operational skills. Companies may seek breakthroughs by finding new approaches to aggregate apartments.
Based on our observation, investors prefer middle- to late-stage startups, making it hard for new companies to grow.
Previous funding round:
- June 2017: Series A, RMB 100 million (approx. US$15.6 million). Joy Capital, Ucommune, and Kaiwuhuadeng
- February 2018: Series B, US$100 million. Gaorong Capital, China Media Capital, Youjin Investment Management, Vision Plus Capital, Joy Capital, and BAI.
- June 2018: Series B+, US$70 million. Tiger Global, China Media Capital, Gaorong Capital, Joy Capital, Youjin Investment Management, Vision Plus Capital, and BAI.
Writer: CHEN Shuya