5Y News｜Influencer E-commerce Service Platform "Mokuai Technology" Closes Hundreds of Millions of Yuan in Series C+ Round

五源资本·October 27, 2020

Social commerce service platform Mokuaan Technology recently completed a Series C+ round of several hundred million yuan, co-led by Eastern Bell Capital and 5Y Capital.

Influencer e-commerce service platform Mokua Technology has recently completed a Series C+ round of financing worth several hundred million yuan, co-led by Eastern Bell Capital and 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital), with continued participation from Zhongyuan Capital, Gaorong Capital, and Micang Capital. Prior to this round, Mokua Technology had already received strategic investments from Kuaishou, Tencent, and Vipshop, as well as funding from Zhongyuan, Gaorong, Eastern Bell, Weiying, Daosheng, and Micang.

Wang Yulin

Founder, Mokua Technology

What was your original motivation for starting this business?

Wang Yulin: I was born in the mountains. My earliest dream was simply to give my parents a better life through my own efforts. Later, I realized there were many others like me — people with dreams and drive, but lacking the opportunity to be seen. That became my new mission: to empower people with dreams. Everything Mokua does today revolves around serving influencers and merchants. We're willing to do the dirty, behind-the-scenes work so that the dreamers out front can shine.

In the live e-commerce industry, what "contrarian" thinking do you have, and what's the biggest market misconception about Mokua?

Wang Yulin: Many people think live e-commerce has already hit the red ocean stage, but I believe it's only just reaching the end of the chaotic early phase. As platform mechanisms become more mature, professional merchants will enter in large numbers. Clearly, many merchants haven't joined yet. When they do, competition will intensify. But for professional players, the current stage is still just the early levels of the game.

Many people see Mokua as a tech company that can't do supply chain well. But we've proven through our actions that we can do supply chain — and do it well. I think 5Y Capital's tagline from their annual meeting captures what I want to say: "When the you that others thought was crazy starts to be believed."

Why did you choose 5Y Capital's investment?

Wang Yulin: I spoke with two of 5Y Capital's partners, Richard and Fisher, twice. The first time, they asked me an enormous number of questions — each one extremely core and difficult to answer. I spent some time afterward thinking through all of them. Because I found clear answers to these fundamental questions, our company strategy became increasingly focused. As the saying goes, "One conversation with a wise person is worth ten years of reading." 5Y Capital is a fund with tremendous insight and genuine long-term conviction, with an outstanding team. Choosing an investor is also choosing a partner. I believe Mokua will grow stronger with 5Y Capital's support, and I wish 5Y Capital continued success.

Shi Yunfeng

Investment Manager, 5Y Capital

Why did you invest in Mokua Technology?

Shi Yunfeng: With the rapid growth of the short video ecosystem, we've observed that compared to traditional shelf-based e-commerce, recommendation-driven commerce centered on "people" is achieving explosive growth and rapidly closing the gap with traditional e-commerce in scale.

Serving a large number of creators is extremely challenging — the operational reality involves countless non-standard problems. Mokua has taken a "dig deep, fight slow" approach to supply chain and creator operations, building real-time end-to-end data insight capabilities through SaaS tools, using live data to improve matching efficiency between creators and products. We believe AI can play a decisive role in matching people with products, and we believe the company can serve more aspiring creators more efficiently and intelligently.

What was your first meeting with Mokua's team like? Were there any memorable details?

Shi Yunfeng: The first meeting was on a Friday evening. I was in Hangzhou on a business trip, crossing through rush hour from Binjiang to Future Sci-Tech City. I saw Mokua's building lit up from floor to ceiling. Walking past the workstations, I could hear the R&D and operations teams discussing problems from a distance. The vitality that team displayed in that moment was deeply moving.

Founded in 2015, Mokua Technology is dedicated to better connecting, empowering, and serving influencers and suppliers, while bringing consumers innovative, high-quality social shopping experiences. Mokua initially focused on providing e-commerce SaaS systems for operations management to large retailers. In early 2018, Mokua partnered with Kuaishou to provide e-commerce transaction SaaS systems and services for influencers. In 2019, Mokua began building out its supply chain capabilities to meet influencers' demand for quality sourcing and related services.

Currently, Mokua Technology uses SaaS tool services as its core to connect the entire live e-commerce value chain, developing an S2B2C business model built on this foundation. Influencers can use the Mokua Star Select merchant app to find suitable supply chains, while selling products directly to consumers, with Mokua handling drop-shipping, after-sales management, and other operational services.

"Mokua Star Select" is Mokua Technology's flagship product, deeply embedded in the Kuaishou and Tencent live streaming ecosystems. It provides influencers and suppliers with live e-commerce SaaS system tools and operational services, including customer management, distribution and promotion, business analytics, and store management, helping users rapidly establish their live e-commerce presence.

According to Founder Securities data, live streaming and short video represent the fastest-growing segment of the internet industry, leading all sectors in both user scale and time spent, accumulating enormous development potential and commercial value. Live e-commerce will maintain rapid growth momentum.

Driven by this trend, Mokua Technology's business has also shown high-speed development. Currently, millions of influencer users and thousands of supplier users have registered with Mokua.

Over five years, Mokua has built substantial capabilities and experience in SaaS tools, supply chain, and operational services.

On the SaaS tools front, Mokua focuses on improving system stability, usability, and openness based on the actual needs of live e-commerce scenarios. According to available information, Mokua's system capabilities and technical level are relatively leading in the industry, supporting high-traffic concurrency including millions of users entering simultaneously per second, hundreds of thousands of users placing orders simultaneously per second, and hundreds of thousands of message pushes. Additionally, Mokua launched new tools this year including membership management CRM and assistant features, further opening its service marketplace to meet users' multi-angle, multi-level needs. At the same time, Mokua has established an AI team to improve matching efficiency between streamers and products through big data and artificial intelligence.

In supply chain, Mokua focuses on expanding both "breadth" and "depth." Currently, Mokua has over 500,000 SKUs listed, with 85% category coverage and over 90% coverage of live-streaming bestsellers, spanning primarily food, beauty, general merchandise, and apparel categories, with continued rapid iteration. Beyond this, Mokua has developed brand incubation and hit product creation capabilities, such as a bee venom toothpaste selling 1.5 million units monthly, and Hewei Fang luosifen generating over 10 million yuan in monthly sales. Mokua has transformed these startup or regional brands into Kuaishou hits, then extended their heat to other e-commerce channels.

In operational services, Mokua has built a tiered operational service system for influencers at different levels, including skills training, live streaming planning, and follower growth guidance. In customer service, Mokua's team has demonstrated strong responsiveness and quality. According to available information, beyond after-sales service, Mokua also provides 7×24-hour product review services, with service satisfaction exceeding 95%.

Meanwhile, to achieve zero-distance service for users, incubate and cultivate talent for the influencer economy, and help transform and upgrade supply-side channels and capabilities, Mokua is comprehensively rolling out offline live streaming bases. Currently, Mokua has established live streaming bases in over 20 cities nationwide, with functions including warehousing and logistics, incubation and training, and event planning.

Following Kuaishou's release of version 8.0 this year, Mokua became one of Kuaishou's core advertising service providers and launched e-commerce advertising services, providing professional traffic placement and optimization services for streamers and merchants.

With Kuaishou as its core base, Mokua continues expanding partnerships on other platforms, including Weishi, Quanmin Kge, Tencent Video, and QQ within the Tencent ecosystem, providing streamers across multiple platforms with SaaS transaction tools, supply chain services, and traffic placement services.

According to iResearch data, live e-commerce scale is expected to exceed one trillion yuan in 2021, becoming the largest growth point in the e-commerce industry. Mokua Technology founder Wang Yulin believes live e-commerce will become standard infrastructure for the e-commerce industry, but it remains in an early development stage with significant growth potential across all dimensions. Going forward, Mokua will continue deepening its work on SaaS tools, supply chain systems, and service infrastructure to jointly improve live e-commerce's foundational capabilities and drive healthy industry development.

5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Capital) currently manages approximately US$3 billion across USD and RMB dual-currency funds. We believe: if the you that others thought was crazy starts to be believed, the world becomes a better place.

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