As of this financing, the total financing of Zhiketong has reached nearly 480 million yuan.
The previously reported “Direct Customer” recently announced the completion of more than 300 million C round of financing. Among them, the C1 round of financing was led by Sequoia Capital China Fund, the existing investors IDG Capital, Shunwei Capital, and the speed of light China were all invested; C2 round financing was led by Yuanhao Capital, Sequoia China followed; C3 round China Youth Travel Red Chip Fund led the investment. It is reported that this round of funds will be mainly used for technological innovation and business expansion.
The company was established in 2014 to provide digital marketing services for high-star hotels, well-known tourist attractions and theme parks in the “transactional SaaS+service” model. According to the official data of Zhiketong, the current monthly transaction volume of Zhiketong partners is about 400 million yuan, of which the head merchants trade volume is more than tens of millions. Among the head hotel customers of Zhiketong Service, the WeChat direct sales accounted for about 10% of the total revenue, and more than 40% of the merchants who cooperated for more than one year came from the repurchase of the old customers.
It is reported that Zhiketong has served more than 3,000 five-star hotels nationwide, and its customers include well-known high-end hotel brands such as Wyndham, Wanda and Magnolia. Similar to Zhiketong, the company that provides WeChat’s refined operation tools to merchants, as well as the “Zhuzan” that has been reported.
As of this financing, the total financing of Zhiketong has reached nearly 480 million yuan.
Financing History of Zhiketong, Source: Whale Standard
The following is a previous report on Zhiketong:
Beginning at the end of 2014, Zhiketong mainly provides marketing tools and services around the official WeChat of merchants, such as high-star hotels, famous tourist attractions and theme parks, so that merchants can reduce their dependence on various channels. , establish your own O2O direct sales channel. The service of Zhiketong is divided into three major blocks:
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Transactional SAAS system. Direct customer support system can support merchantsThe WeChat service number enables the payment function to help merchants build WeChat Mall pages. Merchants can also add red envelopes, pre-sale coupons, and package tickets as needed.
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Business operations. BD staff of Zhiketong will help merchants determine what products to sell (generally to store consumption), how to design products, pricing, marketing, etc. At present, Zhiketong has established offices in 27 regions, covering 133 cities across the country and serving thousands of service providers (one year from the cooperation cycle).
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Agent library. As mentioned earlier, the mode of direct customer access is anti-platform and decentralized. Then, where do the traffic of these direct retail investors come from? The idea of Zhiketong is to make full use of the social traffic of employees and consumer users, and give cash rewards to motivate them to forward. Zhiketong’s real-time accounting system will feedback the number of orders and rewards to the “promoters”. In general, the lower the traffic, the higher the merchandise reward. Zhiketong can get tens of thousands of promoters every month.
This model based on WeChat for direct marketing is similar to Weishang, but there is a big difference. Liu Hua, founder and CEO of Zhiketong, believes that there are two main points:
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From the direct selling products, direct-to-business products are all about local eating, drinking, and playing. They are high-frequency, intuitive and sensible consumer goods, and have a large number of potential customers. Therefore, the promotion of these products can reduce the psychological resentment of both parties, and at the same time strengthen the communication between the same people;
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With the aid of sharing benefits, the amount of bonus money is limited and will not be as high as the micro-business. Correspondingly, promoters do not need to invest money, bear inventory risks and pressures.
Direct customer service mainly through the transaction amount, including 2% service charge and 1% WeChat payment fee profit (SAAS system is provided free of charge). Liu Hua told that last year, Zhiketong acquired over one million online independent consumers. The monthly order volume was nearly 1 million yuan, and the monthly sales exceeded 100 million yuan. The sales of some cooperative merchants were obvious, such as Shenzhen OCT and Haikou. The annual trading volume of Guanlan Lake Resort Hotel has exceeded tens of millions of yuan.
Tokyotong believes that their core competitiveness lies in the combination of technology and marketing services through the “system + operation” model, promoting and selling products to social traffic, forming a complete service closed loop, larger The degree of integration of resources and efficiency. For merchants, direct customer service can effectively increase the number of customers and
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Revenue. Direct sales, no middlemen make a difference.
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Repurchase rate. Ctrip, the US Mission and other platforms are more difficult to build a membership system for merchants, and Zhiketong can help enterprises to build/sell membership credits and stored value cards based on official WeChat, thereby increasing user loyalty and increasing the repurchase rate.
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Service efficiency. Zhiketong can provide the merchant’s official number with the aforementioned functions, such as pre-authorization of WeChat, online ordering, and invoicing, to enhance the service efficiency of merchants and meet the needs of consumers’ convenient experience.
In terms of market size, reported by iResearch In 2016, the market size of O2O to store reached 612.44 billion yuan, but the penetration rate of O2O in the entire local living market is still less than 10%, which is at a low level. Regardless of the O2O platform such as the US group reviews, word of mouth, Baidu glutinous rice, or other channels, this market still has a large room for expansion. In this context, Zhiketong believes that the merchant’s official micro-direct sales model has great potential for development with the help of WeChat, its self-contained flow, low customer cost, efficient circulation, and precise touch.
In the future, Zhiketong will continue to enrich system products and functions, expand city offices, and increase the company’s business coverage and corporate categories.
It is understood that Liu Hua, the founder of Zhiketong, was the senior director of Yilong Travel Network and managed the business teams in eight provinces of Beijing, Southwest and South China. COO Tongjun has worked in Hainan Airlines and Yilong Travel Network, and is responsible for the national BD team management and eLong network operation team management of the eLong Shopping Group. CTO Chen Hao was the technical director of Yilong.com, Yumi.com, and chief technology officer of the train network. Product combinationThe partner Liu Fengju was responsible for the wireless business of Tongcheng.com, Yilong.com and Qunar. He has more than 10 years of experience in the construction of Internet products and systems.
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This article refers to the source: https://www.traveldaily.cn/article/131254