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Top Investment Story
Zhuanzhuan Group (转转)
Zhuanzhuan Group, a secondhand product trading platform, raised USD 100 million in a Series D round led by Xiaomi. The deal takes Zhuanzhuan’s valuation to USD 3 billion. The startup is backed by Tencent and Shunwei Capital, and it is considering an IPO in 2022.
Founded in 2015, Zhuanzhuan Group was incubated by online classifieds platform 58.com to provide secondhand trading services for various commodities like clothing and textiles. Zhuanzhuan Group gradually transitioned from a C2C model to a C2B2C transaction-based model, like eBay. In 2020, Zhuanzhuan Group’s revenue grew by more than 200% year-on-year.
MNCs in China
RGE (Royal Golden Eagle)
Singapore-based RGE is the first foreign company in China to cooperate with Chinese financial institutions on carbon asset custody. Based on the “Carbon Emission Trading Fund Custody Cooperation Agreement” that RGE signed with China’s Bank of Communications’ Jiangsu Branch, RGE will open a special account for carbon emissions trading settlement funds, which will be used for all carbon trading-related business of the group in China. RGE entrusts the account to the Bank of Communications for supervision and custody.
KrASIA News Picks
As the EV race speeds up, can BYD’s battery business close the gap on CATL?
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co, or CATL, dominates the global EV battery market. Its recent deals signed with Tesla, plus record growth in sales registered by CATL customers Nio, XPeng, and Li Auto, have sent the company’s shares up 62% this year, while CATL’s market cap rallied past USD 200 billion from around USD 70 billion just a year ago.
However, with a host of tech giants throwing their weight into the EV race, including Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Tencent, Didi, and Alibaba, CATL is set to face a new round of competition against BYD Auto for supplier contracts. With battery supply deals that are usually not exclusive and plenty of overlap among EV customers, how will this situation pan out? Will BYD close the gap?