5Y News | Buddy Leads the No-Code Digital Transformation Market with $17 Million Series B Round

On May 6, 2021, Huoban Cloud, a leading enterprise-grade no-code application platform in China, officially announced the completion of its $17 million Series B round. The round was co-led by top-tier investment firms 5Y Capital and HSG, with Challenjers Venture Capital participating. This marks the second consecutive time that 5Y Capital and HSG have led a round in Huoban Cloud, following their co-lead in the company's Series A.

Qin Liu, Founding Partner of 5Y Capital, said: "After years of difficult and patient exploration and accumulation, Huoban Cloud has undoubtedly seized on the no-code digitalization trend within cloud computing. But what's even more worth mentioning is that in the nearly 14 years I've known and worked with Dai Zhikang, I've come to appreciate the two most important traits of a true serial entrepreneur: vision and resilience."

"In 2013, when cloud computing had yet to attract attention from the media or the industry, Dai Zhikang told me about 'Discuz!', which he founded in 2001 and which had empowered millions of webmasters. After 'Discuz!' was acquired by Tencent, he spent more time thinking about how to create a new product that could help more small and medium-sized enterprises achieve deep internetization and digitalization of their businesses."

"Amid the raging consumer internet boom of that era, focusing on such an obscure direction as empowering SMEs with cloud services was clearly a crazy move that only someone loyal to their inner convictions and belief in the future would make. And this craziness led to nearly eight years of grueling exploration — a prolonged market education process, repeated twists and turns in technology and product positioning, and complete indifference from the investment market. It was through this ordeal that Dai Zhikang's foresight and resilience as an entrepreneur allowed Huoban Cloud to build up strength and enter a fast track of development. Best wishes to Huoban Cloud."

In 2015, the Huoban Cloud team released its first cloud-native data collaboration product — Huoban Cloud Sheets, which quickly gained favor with over 100,000 users. Around the same time, Airtable across the ocean was also beginning to enter the market. Subsequently, a multi-tiered computing data warehouse engine, a real-time analytics dashboard capable of handling tens of billions of records, a BPMN 2.0 process engine, a low-code workflow engine, a cross-dynamic permissions engine, and a series of other enterprise service capabilities established an industry-leading, out-of-the-box, low-cost, customizable enterprise-grade no-code application platform.

Since 2020, low-code/no-code has become an entirely new hot赛道, with DingTalk also announcing its new positioning as an "application development platform," and numerous enterprises beginning to recognize the critical role that low-code/no-code plays in enterprise digitalization.

Unlike newcomers to the industry, in the eight years before the sector heated up, Huoban Cloud had already invested over 500 million RMB in R&D, gone through more than 10,000 product iterations, and co-built over 800 industry application scenarios with customers. No-code platforms are foundational infrastructure; Huoban Cloud underwent long-term accumulation and validation before today having the opportunity to present itself to the market as a mature, robust, and sustainably investable platform.

Helping frontline business leaders improve performance is Huoban Cloud's core positioning. When frontline business leaders, drawing on their understanding of operations, personally build applications with Huoban Cloud to solve one business problem after another, the value and dividends of digital transformation are truly unleashed. At Huoban Cloud, business personnel can create an application in 5 minutes, deliver a business scenario in 3 hours, and implement a full-business dashboard in 5 days — all without writing a single line of code. Compared to traditional software development, delivery time is reduced by 90% and costs are lowered by 85%. For different types of enterprises, Huoban Cloud has introduced bundled service packages, allowing SMEs to quickly acquire enterprise digital systems tailored to their needs and adaptable to change for less than 1 RMB per person per day.

Traditional low-code/no-code platforms mostly originated from BPM processes and cannot handle massive data correlation, computation, and cleansing; even data analysis requires third-party software. Compared to the management attributes of processes, data is a better motivational tool. Huoban Cloud uses big data technology to drive business processes, not only enabling interactive dashboards that intuitively and instantly display enterprise financial income and expenditure, sales lead conversion, store self-inspection status, employee task completion rankings, and departmental business line performance, but also allowing flexible and rapid adjustments like building with blocks according to the personalized needs of different enterprises, constructing smooth pathways for data-driven business operations.

Digitalization exists not only within enterprises but also extensively in interactions between enterprises and external customers. As the only no-code application platform with a perfect five-star rating on the WeChat Work app marketplace, Huoban Cloud has achieved comprehensive interoperability with WeChat customer data, providing personalized no-code solutions across customer sourcing, tagging, retention and conversion, community operations, and customer self-service, winning broad favor from customers in education, technology, finance, automotive, real estate, retail, catering, and consumer goods industries.

Over eight years, Huoban Cloud has served 150,000 enterprises and over 2 million users, including Tencent's overseas operations, KE Holdings, JD.com, BYD New Energy, Genki Forest, Xijiade, Bojue Travel Photography, Fudan University, Zuoyebang, Yuanfudao, New Oriental, Dingdong Maicai, Bestore, COFCO Real Estate, Dadi Cinema, ICBC, State Grid Corporation of China, Chaoyang District Court, Xinyu City Poverty Alleviation Office, Nanyang City Transportation Law Enforcement Detachment, and Shell, securely hosting over 20 billion data records. The company has obtained Level 3 security certification from the Ministry of Public Security and was ranked first in the "No-Code" category of the 2020 Enterprise Service Digital Competitiveness List — Low-Code/No-Code published by New Voice Research Institute.

Enterprise growth comes from a persistent pursuit of customer success, and the foundation of customer success lies in a healthy business model. Huoban Cloud insists on selling through SaaS annual subscriptions. Customers only renew and expand when they benefit from using the product and see continuously increasing value, thus avoiding the common problem of spending heavily to purchase software outright only to find it goes unused.

To date, Huoban Cloud's customer renewal rate exceeds 80%. Following this funding round, the company will invest more heavily in building out its customer success system. In mid-2021, Huoban Cloud will release its fully rearchitected 5.0 version, which has been in development for a year, delivering significant improvements in usability, lower barriers to entry, and customer success.

Dai Zhikang said: "After founding Discuz! and serving millions of webmasters, Huoban Cloud is the project that most ignites the entrepreneurial passion in my heart. The webmasters back then and the business leaders of today share the same strength — they're great at business, not technology. Huoban Cloud has the opportunity to dramatically lower the barrier for business personnel to build applications through no-code. When more frontline business people can easily construct business dashboards and sustainably solve operational challenges with Huoban Cloud, both organizations and individuals will succeed through elevated enterprise digitalization."

5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital) currently manages approximately $5 billion in USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe the world would be a better place if the you that others see as crazy starts to be believed.

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