Cross-border e-commerce is a good business.

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat official account “Zhixiang.com” (ID:passagegroup), Author Xie Xiaodan.

Sequoia China has been very generous recently.

Cross-border e-commerce brand “VanTop” announced the completion of a 300 million yuan A round of financing, which was exclusively invested by Sequoia Capital China Fund. Not long ago, Sequoia Capital China Fund also led the investment in another cross-border e-commerce brand ShenzhenStarlinkNetwork Technology Co., Ltd. (STARLINK).

In recent years, the investor Haining (pseudonym) who has participated in dozens of cross-border e-commerce projects told Zhi Zhi象网< /a>, financing incidents are definitely more than these. She clearly felt that since the beginning of this year, capital has begun to favor cross-border e-commerce projects.

Affected by the new crown epidemic, people have never relied on online shopping. Cross-border e-commerce has become one of the few good businesses this year. In 2020, when traditional foreign trade is becoming more and more difficult, cross-border e-commerce has been given the important task of stabilizing foreign trade, and supporting policies have increased. Anker Innovation and the story of SHEIN make the capital see more here Direction. Capital’s enthusiasm for cross-border e-commerce has retreated after a few years and rediscovered it. There is still much to be done in this field.

On August 24 this year, Anker was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange/Anker Innovation Official website

Capital rediscovers cross-border e-commerce

Since this year, cross-border e-commerce corporate financing news has been updated frequently.

Take just a recent example. On September 21, 2020, the cross-border e-commerce company Shenzhen Starlink Network Technology Co., Ltd. (STARLINK) announced the completion of a round of financing with a financing amount of about 300 million yuan. Sequoia Capital China Fund led the investment, followed by Tiantu Investment, Xiangfeng Investment, and Lingxi Capital.

Recently, the cross-border e-commerce brand “VanTop” announced the completion of a 300 million yuan A round of financing, with the exclusive investment of Sequoia Capital China Fund and Xinghan Capital as the exclusive financial advisor.

In recent years, investor Haining, who has participated in dozens of cross-border e-commerce projects, told Zhixiang.com that many unannounced projects have also quietly completed financing.

Haining found that capital’s attitude towards cross-border e-commerce is different from before. “This year’s cross-border e-commerce financing is easier, the amount is larger, investors have more first-line funds, and financing rounds are more reliable. Now, B2B (logistics, SAAS, etc.) financing has increased, and the requirements for company profitability have become lower.”

Anke Effect

In the past few years, capital has cooled off cross-border e-commerce. A research report from GF Securities shows that from the perspective of investment and financing data, 2015 was the peak of investment enthusiasm. After 2017, due to the impact of the market environment, the number of investment and financing in the cross-border e-commerce industry began to decrease, and industry financing has cooled.

Haining analyzed on Zhixiang.com, “In 2016-2018, the capital invested in cross-border e-commerce is mainly PE, and the investment round is generallyAfter the B round and the Pre-IPO round, there was only one exit method at that time: A-share listed company mergers and acquisitions. When China Ting acquired Tongtuo, Xinghui acquired Zebao, Tianze acquired Youkeshu, and Xunxing shares acquisition Price of Chain, these mergers and acquisitions have been completed one after another. The CSRC’s problems have become more and more professional, and the market has become more and more concerned about the cash flow and inventory of sellers. The stock price of each company has not risen significantly, and the capital Without making money, it is very natural to have fear of the industry. “

“There is no money in the market. Fundraising in 2018 is particularly difficult.” She recalled, but since the beginning of this year, cross-border e-commerce has become popular in the investment circle.

Haining said that not only the domestic but also overseas markets are also enthusiastic about investment. Since the beginning of this year, the stock prices of platforms such as Amazon have been rising.

The strong performance of cross-border e-commerce companies is even more exciting for capital. On August 24 this year, Anker was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, with an issue price of 66.32 yuan per share and an issuance of 41 million RMB ordinary shares. It became one of the first listed companies under the registration system of the Growth Enterprise Market. As of 11:48 in the morning of the same day, Anker Innovation’s stock price was 138.28 yuan, an increase of 108.50%, the highest intraday stock price reached 168.88 yuan, and the transaction volume had exceeded 2 billion yuan.

Screenshots of various products sold on Amazon by Anker Innovations/Amazon Stores

Anker Innovation, which achieved this achievement, was founded in 2011, starting from the cross-border business of charging products. In the “2020 BrandZ Top 50 Global Brands in China Report” jointly released by WPP, Kantar and Google), Anker Innovation is on the list at the same time as Lenovo, Xiaomi and other well-known companiesThe direction is a fast fashion export cross-border e-commerce brand similar to SheIn. The name of the project has not yet been determined, and it has received an angel round of investment of about 30 million US dollars. The post-investment valuation is 150 million US dollars.

The platform is also the direction favored by capital. Haining believes that you can refer to Lazada, Shopee, and Wish of Alibaba, Tencent, and JD.com. However, the platform is dead for a lifetime and burns fiercely. General capital may not have the strength and determination to invest.

Policy to increase cross-border e-commerce

Since this year, under the quarantine of the epidemic, the development of traditional foreign trade that relies on offline has been hindered, while cross-border e-commerce has bucked the trend.

According to customs statistics, in the first half of this year, China’s general trade import and export transactions fell by 2.6%, processing trade import and export transactions fell by 8%, and the customs’ cross-border e-commerce supervision platform imports and exports increased by 26.2%. The only way to maintain positive growth in trade.

In the general environment of stable foreign trade, policy support for cross-border e-commerce is also increasing. On April 7 this year, Premier Li Keqiang presided over the State Council executive meeting. The meeting decided to establish 46 new comprehensive cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas on the basis of the 59 cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas. After that, the relevant documents of the State Council were issued successively to support cross-border e-commerce in supporting services such as logistics, financing, insurance and other industries.

On July 1 this year, my country launched a pilot program for B2B export supervision of cross-border e-commerce, adding two export supervision codes “9710” and “9810”, corresponding to “cross-border e-commerce B2B direct export” and “cross-border e-commerce” Export to overseas warehouses”. In just two months of the pilot program, China’s cross-border e-commerce business-to-business (B2B) export supervision has ushered in an upgrade. Starting from September 1, on the basis of the existing 10 pilot customs, 12 customs directly under the jurisdiction of Shanghai, Fuzhou, and Qingdao have joined the “pilot group” of cross-border e-commerce B2B export supervision.

China Commercial Industry Research Institute stated in a research report that in 2018, my country’s cross-border e-commerce retail import and export transactions exceeded 100 billion yuan. In 2019, China’s cross-border e-commerce retail import and export volume reached 186.21 billion yuan, five times that of 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 49.5%. With the increase of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive test areas, the scale of the cross-border e-commerce market will further expand, and import and export transactions are expected to reach 280 billion yuan in 2020.

According to the Economic Observer Network, it is not just the State Council’s frequent policy support, but also local support policies