FreeS Family Funding News · June | Saturnbird, Shize Biotech, and Light Travel Secure Funding

"FreeS Family Funding News" is a new column we're launching to share regular updates on funding rounds for FreeS Fund portfolio companies. This includes both new investments and follow-on rounds for companies already in our portfolio. Together, we'll witness each step of innovation — from 0 to 1, 1 to 10, and 10 to 100.

This Month at a Glance:

• Qingke Travel announces completion of tens of millions of RMB in Series A funding, with FreeS Fund as the sole investor
• FreeS Fund Pre-A portfolio company Saturnbird Coffee closes new round at 4.5 billion RMB valuation
• Shize Biotech completes tens of millions of RMB in angel funding, led by FreeS Fund

(Funding information in this roundup is limited to publicly disclosed deals from June, sorted alphabetically by company name.)

We've also released two short videos this month — follow us to check them out.

According to 36Kr, Qingke Travel — a top travel and culture livestreaming brand on Douyin — has raised tens of millions of RMB in Series A funding from FreeS Fund.

**/ From the Investor / **

How did Qingke Travel seize the short-video platform opportunity and complete its transformation?

Click to watch 👆

Congratulations to the Qingke Travel team for achieving a major business model and travel sales model transformation and innovation despite the adverse impact of COVID-19.

On the business model front, Qingke Travel shifted from B2B to the more expansive B2C market. On the sales model front, the team moved away from traditional, product-centric, somewhat dry and text-heavy OTA shelf-style sales toward emerging, user-centric, more engaging and scalable video livestream sales.

This transformation and innovation has yielded impressive results. Qingke Travel has become the top travel and culture livestreaming brand on Douyin — a case of comeback from adversity.

▍How Did Qingke Travel Break Through the Travel Industry's Winter?

The Qingke Travel team entered the travel industry in 2014, originally positioning itself as a provider of customized travel products and services for OTA platforms. Its core work covered travel product R&D, supply chain organization and management, and operational execution. Through this process, the team accumulated deep industry expertise and professional capabilities.

In 2020, COVID-19 presented both a challenge and an opportunity for Qingke Travel. As the travel industry went from complete shutdown to gradual recovery, the team keenly seized the opportunity presented by emerging internet media platforms, going deep into Douyin and other platforms to pivot to B2C business. Currently, Qingke Travel's B2C sales have already surpassed its previous B2B peak — and continue to grow rapidly.

▍"Momentum Comes from Traffic; Survival Depends on Supply Chain"

The rich industry knowledge and efficient operational systems Qingke Travel built during its B2B years have supported and accelerated its B2C growth. There's a saying in consumer goods investing: "Momentum comes from traffic; survival depends on supply chain." It means that new consumer brands initially rely on front-end user growth capabilities (including customer acquisition and marketing), but sustainable development depends on back-end product development and supply chain capabilities.

Qingke Travel spent its first five years building solid back-end capabilities through B2B business, then entered emerging platforms to do B2C, diving deep into customer acquisition and marketing to become a top travel and culture brand on these platforms, successfully attracting large numbers of users and orders. This is a case of veterans taking a new path — excellence on both the front and back ends. That's one of Qingke Travel's core competitive advantages.

▍Every Vertical Consumer Industry Has an Opportunity to Be Rebuilt with DTC

We've observed that over the past decade, the consumer sector in both China and the US has seen a wave of emerging brands, commonly characterized by the DTC (direct-to-consumer) model. These are collectively known as DTC brands. The US has seen brands like Warby Parker and Allbirds; China has seen Taobao-native brands like Three Squirrels, followed by newer DTC brands like Perfect Diary and Saturnbird Coffee.

DTC brands break through in industries dominated by giants through three main characteristics: eliminating all intermediate channels, user-centric digital operations, and innovative marketing approaches.

We firmly believe in the entrepreneurial opportunity for DTC consumer brands in China, including in travel. It's a flourishing landscape where every vertical industry has an opportunity to be rebuilt with the DTC model. There are two approaches: "internet plus industry" (internet teams going deep into an industry) and "industry plus internet" (veteran industry teams entering the internet space). Qingke Travel represents the latter. Both models have successful examples and opportunities — to all entrepreneurs, keep pushing forward.

We hope the Qingke Travel team seizes this DTC opportunity in travel and culture, making full use of new media platforms and formats to create new transaction scenarios and consumption experiences in travel, and achieves even greater success. Go for it!

**/ Company Details / **

Qingke Travel is accelerating its travel and culture livestreaming development, evolving its current livestream model to achieve scalable business growth, and planning to expand to additional livestream commerce platforms including Kuaishou and Taobao Live.

Qingke Travel currently ranks as the #1 travel and culture livestreaming brand on Douyin's e-commerce platform. Since entering Douyin livestream e-commerce in January 2021, it has achieved over 200% average monthly transaction growth. Monthly self-livestream GMV grew from under 100,000 RMB in January to over 10 million RMB by May.

Qingke Travel primarily uses its own branded account for livestreaming rather than influencer-driven sales, which supports sales stability and long-term growth. The company is evolving its current livestream model to solidify its front-end traffic advantage. It projects achieving over 300 million RMB in transaction volume for 2021. (For more details: 36Kr Exclusive | Top Travel and Culture Livestream Brand "Qingke Travel" Raises Tens of Millions in Series A from FreeS Fund)

According to LatePost, specialty coffee brand Saturnbird Coffee has completed a new round of funding in the hundreds of millions of RMB, led by CPE, with IDG, GGV, and Nei Xiang Fund participating, at a post-money valuation of 4.5 billion RMB.

**/ From the Investor / **

Watch how Feng Shu interprets the lesser-known details of Saturnbird Coffee

Click to watch 👆

Special congratulations to Saturnbird Coffee on this new round. There's already no shortage of market analysis on the company. Beyond the congratulations, we'd like to share some angles and questions that perhaps don't get mentioned as often.

▍The Founder Is Always the Most Important Factor

First, looking at founder Jun Wu: like many food and beverage entrepreneurs, he's no newcomer to coffee. Before founding Saturnbird Coffee, he had already accumulated years of experience in this space — running cafés, operating various coffee equipment businesses, and more. Whether online or offline, equipment or coffee itself, he knew it deeply. And this expertise stemmed from his genuine love for and dedication to the product.

These experiences and processes are what enabled Wu to ultimately apply freeze-drying and related extraction technologies to Saturnbird Coffee — creating a product that consumers recognize and are satisfied with, with good flavor fidelity. This came from his persistent desire to make specialty pour-over coffee more accessible, available, and easier to use. A founder's dedication to their industry — whether for the brand's original vision or its genesis — is crucial.

▍Behind Saturnbird Coffee's 100,000+ WeChat Articles

Second, as a brand, there are one or two things that people might easily overlook. When CEOs ask me who's particularly good at brand promotion and copywriting, I often mention Saturnbird Coffee because of an interesting small detail.

Saturnbird Coffee posts on its WeChat public account very irregularly — it's hard to predict when the next article will come. For a branded business account with its own content, and with such irregular updates, nearly every article approaches or exceeds 100,000+ views, and the comments below are genuinely moving. This is extremely rare for a brand's public account. It likely demonstrates consumers' — or product users' — fondness for and attention to Saturnbird Coffee. If you're interested, go take a look.

▍How Does Saturnbird Coffee Polish Every Product-Related Detail?

Third, related to the above: every word in every article on Saturnbird Coffee's public account has probably been revised by the founder himself countless times. The phrasing, the countless layout revisions, even the photos — the founder scrutinizes every detail before allowing publication. Of course, this may consume significant time and energy. But it demonstrates how a brand's founder cherishes their product and brand.

When a brand's creator treats public account content as part of the brand expression and values it so highly, you can understand how Saturnbird Coffee as a brand invests time and energy into researching and attending to every manifestation and detail related to the product. Undoubtedly, what they've poured the most effort into is the coffee itself. It's not just freeze-drying technology — every step of the process, including bean selection, has likely received dozens or even hundreds of times more care and energy than the word-by-word refinement of public account articles. Nearly every process step they employ is unprecedented in the market, improved or elevated by the Saturnbird Coffee team itself. This also owes much to their partners — things that remain "invisible" to outsiders.

There's already been extensive discussion of Saturnbird Coffee's packaging, design, Return Plan, coffee fidelity, product format, solubility, and so on. These three small matters we've raised are perhaps the less-noticed brand operations and comprehensive brand image elements behind Saturnbird Coffee's achievements today — including this funding round. Of course, these also connect back to the founder.

▍Without the Allure of Scarcity, How Does Saturnbird Coffee Create "Addiction"?

One more question worth raising. On the internet, building a brand with pricing power is difficult. Previously, premium pricing came partly from communication with consumers. Additionally, premium pricing came to some extent from product scarcity itself.

For example, if I open an offline viral café, you have to come to that specific location to try the viral product. Users in other regions can only see information or photos — that's scarcity. Internet brands face inherent difficulty creating scarcity from day one. Because you're available everywhere online, even selling overseas. Except when out of stock, your product is generally available anytime, deliverable within a day or two.

With this natural absence of scarcity, how do you drive user attachment? How do you still command brand premium? This is a challenge for internet brands.

Saturnbird Coffee can't rely on scarcity, on being unavailable or untasteable, to build influence like a viral café can. From day one, Saturnbird Coffee has needed to be buyable whenever people want it. Despite this absence of scarcity, Saturnbird Coffee has still achieved brand premium and virality, and won consumers' affection.

These points, shared in congratulations to Saturnbird Coffee, are offered for mutual exploration, reflection, and discussion among internet brand entrepreneurs and fellow investors.

Further Reading Here's an analysis of Saturnbird Coffee that we hope provides some inspiration: "Surpassing Nestlé and Starbucks During 618 to Top the Instant Beverage Category: What Did Saturnbird Coffee Do Right? | FreeS Research — Learning from Investment" (Click the blue title to read)

(Click image 👆 to go directly to article)

**/ Company Details / **

Founded in 2015 in Changsha, Saturnbird Coffee's flagship product is small-cup freeze-dried instant coffee. Unlike traditional instant coffee that only dissolves in hot water, freeze-dried coffee powder dissolves in cold water and milk, offering greater convenience while preserving more coffee flavor. This year, Saturnbird Coffee launched freeze-dried instant tea and oat milk, and plans to introduce liquid coffee products.

Founder Jun Wu stated that Saturnbird Coffee maintains a once-a-year fundraising rhythm, with this round preparing the company to enter new channels.

In January 2019, Saturnbird Coffee completed its first fundraising, receiving Pre-A investment from FreeS Fund. Wu noted that the founding team deliberated for a year and a half before accepting its first institutional investment. This was followed by a Series A in July 2019 led by Tiantu Capital with FreeS Fund participating, and a Series A+ in November from both existing investors. In March 2020, Sequoia Capital China led the Series B with FreeS Fund participating, at which point Saturnbird Coffee was valued at approximately 800 million RMB.

This year's 618 shopping festival, Saturnbird Coffee again ranked first in Tmall's coffee category and the broader instant beverage category, with sales exceeding the next three brands combined. According to third-party data, Saturnbird Coffee's single-day peak sales on Tmall during 618 approached 40 million RMB, with total sales during the event nearing 100 million RMB. (For more details: LatePost Exclusive | Saturnbird Coffee New Funding at 4.5 Billion Valuation, Opening Shanghai Offline Store in August)

According to 36Kr, next-generation stem cell therapy company Shize Biotech has publicly disclosed completion of tens of millions of RMB in angel funding, led by FreeS Fund, with YuanSheng Ventures and TEDA Venture Capital participating. The angel round funds have already been deployed toward establishing Shize Biotech's R&D center, supporting team recruitment, and launching key R&D experiments.

**/ From the Investor / **

In recent years, the boom in biotech innovative drugs has enabled progress against many human diseases, yet neurodegenerative diseases have seen few major breakthroughs. These diseases have complex causes and long, insidious courses; traditional drugs struggle to be effective. Thus, the market has substantial unmet clinical needs. The combination of induced stem cells and gene editing technology brings new possibilities for tackling these degenerative diseases. We are optimistic about Shize Biotech's exploration in scalable, high-quality, low-cost cell therapy, and are willing to continue supporting and accompanying Shize Biotech's growth.

Further Reading Here's a biopharma article collection (click blue link to go directly) This collection records FreeS Fund's insights on the biopharma industry. We review nearly six years of biopharma investment practice; discuss the fundamentals, current state, and future of gene therapy; analyze COVID-19's impact on the biopharma industry; and share founders' ideals and realities in biopharma entrepreneurship.

(Click image 👆 to go directly to collection)

**/ Company Details / **

Stem cell therapy has been called "the third revolution in human medical history," and every move in this frontier technology attracts close market and capital attention. Shize Biotech is precisely an emerging player in this industry. Shize Biotech's core team comes from top domestic and international universities and research institutions including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Harvard University, and UC Berkeley, with an average of ten years in "stem cell plus gene" scientific research and commercialization. The core team possesses unique and solid experience in cutting-edge technology innovation and applied translation in the stem cell therapy field.

Shize Biotech is targeting the global market, aiming to develop scalable, low-cost stem cell treatment solutions for major diseases lacking clinical solutions, particularly major neurological diseases represented by Parkinson's disease. (For more details: 36Kr Exclusive | Next-Generation Stem Cell Therapy Emerging Player "Shize Biotech" Discloses Completion of Tens of Millions in Angel Funding)

▲ FreeS Family Funding News · May | Chicecream, ACC Super Accessories, DataPipeline, and Ganyi Intelligence raise funding

▲ FreeS Family Funding News · April | AnKor Pharmaceuticals, IceKredit, Duanmu Liangjin, and Jiuzhou Cloud Arrow raise funding

▲ Breaking Consumer Industry Involution: Is the Secret "Going Premium"? | Li Feng Column

▲ How to Win Over Chinese and American Gen Z Consumers? Thoughts and Moves from a Streamlined D2C Skincare Brand

▲ FreeS Fund Hiring Investors and Interns, Winning Multiple Awards from 36Kr, ChinaVenture, Yibang, and CHC · CITIC Securities Healthcare Conference | FreeS Office Vol. 8

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Please send resumes to hr@freesvc.com

*Please specify in email subject: Position — Name — School — Major — Minimum internship commitment of X months — X days per week on-site — Earliest start date