"iBeidiao" Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Series B1 Funding | FreeS Fund Investment News

" Investor Perspective

Pengqi Liu, Early-Stage Project Lead, FreeS Fund

Email: pengqi@freesvc.com

As iBackCheck's angel investor, FreeS Fund has witnessed the company's persistence and growth over the past four years. As an enterprise services company, the team has stayed focused on the background check space, dedicated to delivering excellent service while strengthening technology R&D to improve internal efficiency and quality — waiting out the winter in an industry that seems far from glamorous until spring finally arrived.

Over the past two years, iBackCheck has experienced explosive growth and has become an industry leader. We believe that with the support of this round of investment, iBackCheck can continue to expand and grow, extending its service boundaries to help society build a better credit environment.

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36Kr Exclusive | "iBackCheck" Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Series B1 Funding, Future Capital Sole Investor

Source: 36Kr

Author: Lin Lubi @36Kr Pro

36Kr has learned that intelligent employee background check service provider "iBackCheck" has completed a Series B1 funding round of tens of millions of RMB, with Future Capital as the sole investor and Yuze Capital continuing to serve as financial advisor for this round. 36Kr has previously reported on iBackCheck multiple times.

Jie Li, founder and CEO of iBackCheck, told 36Kr that following this funding round, the company will further expand its market presence. In addition to Hangzhou and Beijing, it will add direct sales teams in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, while establishing more channel partnerships. On the product side, beyond further improving standardization and intelligence, the company will explore more "extended background check" scenarios, such as student admissions, rental housing, and matchmaking.

The domestic HR services market is still in its early stages of development, and background check services represent a rapidly growing segment. iBackCheck's business model is very clear: using a SaaS model to provide standardized, professional background check services to enterprises with background check needs.

Against a backdrop of rampant resume fraud and an immature social credit system, companies generally have a need for candidate background checks — especially as more new service industries develop (sharing economy, flexible employment), making the need to mitigate employment risks through background checks even more pronounced.

However, existing solutions clearly cannot yet meet enterprise needs. Most corporate background checks are conducted independently by HR departments, which face insufficient investigation resources and overwhelming volume. Traditional background check agencies, because they rely on manual execution, are expensive (1,000 RMB per person for ordinary positions, 1,500 RMB or more for key positions) and inefficient.

This situation has created a "misconception" about background checks — that they are a premium need only for senior executives and similar positions.

iBackCheck improves the efficiency of objective information verification by structuring and automating some data work for machine verification, and uses AI technology to transform manual services for subjective interview work, packaging everything into a standardized product.

For enterprise clients, using the background check service is as simple as online shopping — log into the SaaS system account, or embed iBackCheck's standard SDK into their own HR system, place an order online, and after candidates authorize via facial recognition and electronic signature, the background check begins. Reports for objective data checks (no manual interview needed) can be delivered instantly, while reports requiring supplementary manual interviews take 1-4 business days. iBackCheck's current average delivery time is 2 business days.

Through these improvements, iBackCheck has also dramatically reduced background check prices, driving adoption downstream — from mid-to-senior positions to frontline positions, and extending to blue-collar and flexible employment positions.

iBackCheck is demonstrating first-mover advantage. In April this year, when 36Kr reported on the company, iBackCheck had 700+ position models; now it has 2,000 different industry and position background check models, updated and iterated daily. Li believes the competitive landscape in background checks will trend toward high concentration, because background checks are an assessment of professional credit, and credibility is a very distinctive business characteristic — clients will concentrate toward institutions with greater authority and credibility.

"iBackCheck's value is not only reflected on the enterprise side, but also in creating a fairer competitive environment for honest job seekers, making the entire society's professional credit environment better," Li said.

Beyond this, iBackCheck's competitive moat is reflected in two aspects: first, high efficiency — both product and service efficiency, mainly demonstrated through using technology to transform manual services and building moats in product standardization and intelligence; and customer acquisition efficiency, maintaining reasonable and controllable acquisition costs while scaling quickly. Second, high retention — customer repeat purchases are a very critical factor.

Currently, iBackCheck has nearly 7,000 paying clients, including direct sales clients such as Bank of Ningbo, NetEase, and Taiping Insurance. On the channel agency side, it has partnerships with ByteDance's Lark, Liepin, Beisen, Fesco Adecco, and others. The customer retention rate exceeds 90%, the revenue retention rate exceeds 150%, and referrals from existing clients account for nearly 30% of new customer acquisition.

Previously, iBackCheck raised its Series A+ round in August 2018, led by Eastern Capital, with Meridian Capital partner Gaonan Zhang and existing shareholder FreeS Fund participating.