C2C ecommerce app Jiemi raises “several million USD” in series A

Chinese C2C ecommerce app Jiemi announced today that it has raised “several million USD” in series A funding from IDG Ventures.

Jiemi, which was founded in 2014, is the brainchild of former Alibaba employee Wang Yang. Wang was one of the founding members of its daily deals service Juhuasuan, but his new venture has more global aspirations: Jiemi allows users to buy products from all over the world at a discount. These products are photographed and posted by other users – any user who’s interested can start photographing local items on sale and become a seller once they get verified by Jiemi. The idea is that Jiemi will take advantage of the global Chinese diaspora to offer discounted brand-name foreign products to Chinese consumers from Chinese-speaking sellers.

It’s a concept that has immense promise. As domestic incomes rise but trust in Chinese-made products remains low, China’s consumers have an increasing interest in foreign products. China’s largest ecommerce sites have already begun moving to globalize their offerings in response to this shift. For example, JD has launched a French Mall section of its store with imported French goods. Alibaba is planning an international version of Taobao. Going global will be one of China’s biggest ecommerce trends in 2015.

Jiemi’s C2C approach also has the advantage of including social elements (you can follow and chat with sellers you like), and it already has a fair number of offerings across a variety of product categories and countries. With this investment, the company is planning further expansion, and hopes to have 10,000 verified sellers across 100 different countries by the end of 2015.

Jiemi’s app is available on iOS and Android.

(Source: Sina Tech)