Zhongxuegao

Zhongxuegao (钟薛高, also rendered Chicecream) is a premium Chinese ice cream brand founded in Shanghai in March 2018 by Sheng Lin (林盛), who serves as its founder and CEO . It entered the market with a signature patented tile-shaped ice cream bar and positioned itself as a high-end guochao label — in Lin's words, "鲜活的中国之造," aiming to make China's best, highest-quality ice cream . Backed early by ZhenFund and FreeS Fund (angel round) and Tiantu Capital (Pre-A), it closed a RMB 200 million Series A in May 2021 led by Genesis Capital, with H Capital and 万物资本 participating .

Its rise rode two structural shifts FreeS Capital has highlighted: China's improving cold-chain infrastructure (its rich dairy-heavy recipe melts easily, requiring -22°C cold chain end to end, which only became viable for online sales as logistics costs fell) and aggressive brand-building through crossovers with Xiaomi, Wahaha, Nayuki, Three Squirrels and others . By the 2020 Double 11 it ranked first in Tmall's ice cream category with 1.8 million flagship-store followers and 34 million bars shipped that year; from 2020 it pushed offline into convenience stores and pop-ups, with omni-channel sales up 300% year-on-year in the first four months of 2021 . Lin has publicly downplayed GMV-chasing as "虚假繁荣" (fake prosperity), arguing repurchase rates and unit economics matter more . Note that elsewhere's corpus on the brand clusters around 2019–2021, so later developments are not covered here.