2 Overseas Market Funding/Acquisition Deals, 6 Companies Undergoing Strategic Upgrades, 7 Companies Winning Multiple Awards | Code Meet Journal · November

To Our Readers

Three and a half years since Source Code Capital's founding, our family of portfolio companies has grown into a thriving forest. The Code Society has become a platform where our founders, LPs, and partners exchange ideas. We are launching a new column: Code Society Chronicle, to record our friends' progress, share the joy of growth, and look forward to an even brighter future.

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Chronicle

Briefing

"Funding"

ByteDance acquires Musical.ly at $1 billion valuation

RozBuzz closes Series A of tens of millions of RMB

Capturing the vernacular content feed entrance in India

"Milestones"

Che300 forms strategic partnership with Haoche Daojia

Juli Xinfang achieves 210 million RMB in Singles' Day GMV

Asset360 builds diversified professional non-performing asset disposal model

Nongfenqi creates proprietary "Nongrenbang" information system

Hui Fenqi empowers apartment operators with Finance + SaaS + AI

Mor.AI becomes Sharp's AI interaction solution supplier

"Quotes"

Lin Enmin: Four Inevitabilities in the Age of Intelligence

Wang Chaocheng: Growth Rules and Monetization Logic for B2B Companies

Dai Shuaixiang: AI Accelerates China's Smart Manufacturing

"Honors"

ByteDance named to "AI Oscar" Top 10 Giant Enterprises

Lianjia wins "2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Impact Award"

CHJ Automotive ranks Top 10 in "2017 China's Hard Tech Rising Star Enterprises 50"

Zhirong Group named "2017 Deloitte-China Renaissance China Rising Star"

"Annual Outstanding AI Application Enterprise"

Suishou Tech named "2017 Fintech Most Investable Enterprise"

Che300 wins "Automotive Financial Service Innovation Award"

Niu Technologies wins China Outstanding Design Award

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Milestone

ByteDance Acquires Musical.ly

At $1 Billion Valuation

On November 10, ByteDance formally signed an agreement to fully acquire Musical.ly, the popular North American short-video social product. Musical.ly was valued at nearly $1 billion. Following the transaction, ByteDance's music short-video community Douyin will merge with Musical.ly. Both brands will remain independent while exploring deeper cooperation in technology, product, and other areas. This acquisition continues ByteDance's globalization strategy and marks its second North American short-video product after Flipagram.

Musical.ly officially launched in North America in 2014 as a short-video social product targeting young users, with over 90% of its user base under 21. It quickly rose to prominence, once topping the U.S. App Store rankings. Currently, Musical.ly has over 20 million daily active users globally, including more than 6 million in North America.

Liu Zhen, Senior Vice President at ByteDance, stated that both Douyin and Musical.ly are beloved by young people in China and abroad. Going forward, the two will leverage their respective strengths in technology and content to jointly build the world's largest short-video social entertainment platform.

RozBuzz Closes Series A of Tens of Millions from Shunwei, Xiaomi, and Source Code Capital

RozBuzz, a feed-class application dedicated to providing mobile internet news aggregation services for India's massive urban population, recently announced the completion of its Series A funding. The round totaled tens of millions of RMB, led by Shunwei Capital with Xiaomi and Source Code Capital participating.

Founded in 2016, RozBuzz is a Chinese-Indian "hybrid" company: its domestic team focuses on technology and data, while its India team handles product design, content, and user operations. In just one year of operation, RozBuzz has rapidly grown to tens of millions of users, with over one million daily active users on its platform. RozBuzz CEO Chen Ning predicts that as India's mobile user base expands, RozBuzz will eventually cover approximately 300 million mainstream Indian users.

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What's New

Che300 Forms Strategic Partnership with Haoche Daojia

On November 15, Che300, an automotive transaction and auto finance data service provider, formed a strategic partnership with Haoche Daojia, an innovative internet auto finance service platform. The two parties will cooperate on front-end big data exchange for auto finance, back-end integrated service operations for auto finance, and new media operations. They will also jointly establish an auto finance AI research lab in Shanghai.

Currently, auto finance penetration in China remains relatively low, indicating substantial room for growth. Che300 offers integrated risk control and asset screening solutions for auto finance institutions and capital providers through its self-developed "Auto Loan Asset Gamma Risk Control System." This comprehensive partnership will not only effectively address transaction loop closure, information loop closure, and capital loop closure, but also elevate the used car industry's efficiency to an entirely new level. The collaboration between the two companies will create a healthy business ecosystem loop.

Juli Xinfang Enters JD.com Real Estate

Singles' Day GMV Reaches 210 Million RMB

On the morning of November 12, Juli Xinfang announced its Singles' Day results. Partnering with JD.com Real Estate from October 19 to November 11, Juli achieved 123 transactions in Suzhou alone, with total transaction value reaching 217,073,229 RMB. The "real estate + e-commerce" model has long been established abroad. In the United States, for instance, platforms like Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, and Craigslist have vastly increased the amount of real estate information available. This Singles' Day transaction volume validates the "real estate + e-commerce" model. JD.com Real Estate and Juli Xinfang have jointly pioneered a new chapter in real estate e-commerce for the era of big property.

Wang Peng, CEO of Juli Xinfang, stated: "JD.com has deep understanding of e-commerce transactions, along with traffic and brand advantages. Juli has spent three years深耕 in new home e-commerce, with end-to-end transaction services and data advantages from online to offline, as well as brand influence within the industry. Our partnership can provide consumers with better home-buying services, making real estate transactions as convenient as other e-commerce purchases. Therefore, these sales figures were within expectations."

Asset360 Builds Diversified

Professional Non-Performing Asset Disposal Model

As China's economic development enters the new normal, certain industries and regional economic structures face increasing adjustment pressure. The macro economy will continue to prioritize stable growth and structural adjustment. Under current conditions, non-performing asset ratios for internet finance platforms and banks continue to climb. The complex and variable nature of non-performing asset disposal creates uncertainty in cash flow recovery, increasing disposal difficulty. Disposal value and timing are also affected to some extent.

Asset360's self-developed non-performing asset disposal management system features industry-leading functionality and disposal capabilities. Its intelligent collection center, outbound call system, mobile collection app "Cuiji," and other functions and products provide comprehensive disposal services for its primary clients — consumer finance, microloan, and other internet finance platforms, as well as select local banks — across intelligent matching, batch operations, big data analysis, asset disposal, and information feedback. The company aims to control disposal risk and improve disposal efficiency. Simultaneously, Asset360 has established nationwide coverage, signing strategic partnerships with thousands of disposal agencies across cities at all levels to achieve truly localized disposal.

Nongfenqi Creates Proprietary "Nongrenbang" Information System

Big Data Profiling for New Agricultural Business Entities

"In the first half of this year, the Nongfenqi platform served nearly 400,000 new agricultural business entities nationwide, including large-scale grain farmers, family farms, and farmer cooperatives. Among these, we directly provided over 1 billion RMB in agricultural support funds to more than 20,000 farming households."

At the first "National New Farmer New Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference" held recently in Suzhou, Jiangsu, Senior Vice President Yan Lei stated that Nongfenqi is currently the largest and most comprehensive "Internet + Agriculture" integrated service platform in China. It has provided billions of RMB in funding, production materials, and socialized services to agricultural business entities in major agricultural provinces including Jiangsu, Anhui, and Henan.

"Technology is the primary productive force of the Nongfenqi platform." Speaking of core advantages, Yan Lei noted that Nongfenqi's R&D team exceeds 100 people. Its proprietary "Nongrenbang" information system performs big data profiling for new agricultural business entities, achieving data tagging, visualization, and intelligence. Its self-developed "Cunhuabang" app leverages mobile internet to help farming households access agricultural production services including rice transplanting, harvesting, crop protection, and grain sales.

Hui Fenqi

Empowering Apartment Operators with Finance + SaaS + AI

As post-90s and post-95s generations become the primary renting demographic, consumption upgrades have extended to living experiences. "Better housing" is a strong demand from users. Multiple dimensions of rental products — decoration, location, supporting services, and self-identity — are undergoing disruptive upgrades.

However, apartment operators themselves, as traditional industry practitioners, lack professional capabilities in user operations, community marketing, and scenario-based consumer finance. At this point, capable platforms are needed to empower apartment operators, providing comprehensive integrated solutions covering products, operations, and finance — which is precisely what Hui Fenqi's Finance + SaaS + AI aims to do.

Founded in 2014, Hui Fenqi is an innovative company dedicated to serving the apartment industry, connecting apartment operators, renters, third-party service providers, and financial institutions. Hui Fenqi has received 230 million RMB in Series C funding from A-share listed company Lianluo Hudong. Its business covers nearly 40 cities, serving millions of apartment units. Through years of experience serving the apartment industry, Hui Fenqi founder & CEO Li Lei has observed that driven by policy tailwinds, the long-term rental apartment sector has entered the fast lane.

Li Lei said: "Over the past three years, we've evaluated thousands of traditional agencies and apartment operators, while accumulating substantial industry data. Our core team comes from BAT, Lianjia, and 5i5j. We believe we have the capability to empower apartment partners through products and services, jointly building a new ecosystem for the rental industry, and making the apartment business easier!"

Mor.AI Becomes Sharp's AI Interaction Solution Supplier

Sharp released the world's first AI service television, continuing to build its smart home ecosystem with television as the hub of home IoT. To this end, Sharp approached Mor.AI (蓦然认知), a leading domestic AI interaction solution provider, and established deep strategic cooperation to further empower television with artificial intelligence. Following the approach of television + AI voice interaction + service scenarios, Sharp launched the world's first AI service television.

This interaction experience fully exploits and amplifies the value of the large television screen, while AI voice interaction also enhances service experience and distribution efficiency. In practical usage scenarios, all family members regardless of age, gender, or education level can operate the AI television without barriers through voice interaction, lowering the threshold for ordinary users to access high-tech products. When enjoying lifestyle services and making consumption decisions, the inherent visual impact of the large television screen surpasses that of small mobile phones, enhancing the visual experience.

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Quote

Lin Enmin (Co-founder & President, INK Group)

Because I work in fintech, we often think about the future of technology finance. After organizing these thoughts, we believe there may be four inevitabilities in the age of intelligence. The first inevitability: the explosion of intelligent industries. We can see that in the past, everyone believed all companies needed to become internet-based and do e-commerce. But today we can see that all companies must become intelligent, because these capabilities are foundational. Capturing the intelligent entry point and account system is how you can accumulate more user information. The second inevitability: data security governance. Data is the foundation of intelligence, but it also brings something else — pollution. It's like human mining: after mining comes air pollution. Data also has pollution, which may persist for considerable periods. The third inevitability: there will inevitably exist gray areas and data security issues. If a company can solve these problems, that also represents enormous opportunity. The fourth inevitability: monopoly in intelligent industries. Data has a black hole effect. When the black hole effect appears, our entire system will develop increasingly powerful based around this black hole.

Wang Chaocheng (Founder & CEO, Yijiupi)

The growth logic is to solidly execute B2B itself, then extend upward and downward — but this extension has boundaries. Don't think you can become China's largest chain company, nor think you can easily "empower" and integrate everyone in the industry chain. You have no warehouses, no distribution, nothing — just relying on data to integrate everyone. This works because Alibaba succeeded, so all of China is thinking about the Alibaba path. The growth logic is just these two logics: core competencies must be solid, then extend upward and downward — scale is not a problem. Monetization methods are two reliable approaches: for commodities, I estimate finance is more important; for fast-moving consumer goods, I estimate self-operated e-commerce is more important. Because in FMCG, finance doesn't play as large a role as in commodities — many downstream merchants don't want it. Upstream distributors also have sufficient capital, so generally the volume won't be too large.

Dai Shuaixiang (Founder & CEO, Mor.AI)

Device intelligence first requires solving how to make devices interact with humans very naturally. The essence of natural interaction is liberating hands, even liberating eyes — entering the era of voice interaction, achieving complete unification of applications across software and hardware, fulfilling user needs through dialogue. Mor.AI's vision is to use cognitive computing to build a complete dialogue and application framework, providing information processing, speech recognition, semantic understanding, and service mobile docking, truly achieving application implementation. The entire process is implemented at three levels. The bottom level is hardware devices; the second level is speech recognition and speech synthesis; the upper level combines semantic understanding, dialogue systems, learning systems, automatic service docking, and speech generation, thereby truly achieving voice dialogue. Additionally, technology alone is insufficient to drive industry transformation; commercialization is also required for true application.

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Honor & Awards

ByteDance Named to "AI Oscar"

Top 10 Giant Enterprises

On November 8, the AI World 2017 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, hosted by AI Era, opened at Beijing National Convention Center. The highly anticipated AI Oscar five major awards list was revealed. In September, the AI World 2017 "AI Oscar" Top 10 selection activity launched, generating strong industry response. Final winners were selected through voting by over 300 AI Era think tank experts and 300,000 readers. In the vote tally, expert votes carried 55% weight and reader votes 45%. Following candidate nomination, expert voting, reader voting, statistical tabulation, and expert review, the AI Oscar winners were determined. ByteDance was named to the enterprise list — "AI Oscar" Top 10 Giant Enterprises.

2

Lianjia Wins

"2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Impact Award"

On November 21, the "Industry-City Integration — 2017 China Urban Development Summit," guided by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and hosted by China Business Journal, was held in Beijing. Lianjia, recognized for its commitment to building the "housing" entry point and its deep engagement in social responsibility in recent years, won the "2017 Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Impact Award."

3

CHJ Automotive Named to

"2017 China's Hard Tech Rising Star Enterprises 50"

Top 10

The Xi'an Municipal Committee of the CPC and Xi'an Municipal People's Government hosted the "2017 Global Hard Technology Innovation Conference" in Xi'an on November 7–8, 2017. The conference invited approximately 800 attendees including national ministry leaders, provincial and municipal leaders, Nobel laureates, domestic and international academicians and experts, technology enterprise leaders, and renowned investors. At the conference, the "2017 China's Hard Tech Rising Star Enterprises 50" was prominently released, with CHJ Automotive ranking in the Top 10.

4

Zhirong Group Wins

"2017 Deloitte-China Renaissance China Rising Star"

"Annual Outstanding AI Application Enterprise"

On November 9, the Deloitte 2017 China Technology Fast 50 awards ceremony officially opened in Guangzhou. This award enjoys worldwide prestige and is considered one of the industry's most authoritative, impartial, and investment-guiding rankings. Zhirong Group, recognized for its outstanding application of artificial intelligence technology in the financial sector, emerged from rigorous selection among numerous competitive enterprises to win the "2017 Deloitte-China Renaissance China Rising Star" award, a sister program of the Deloitte Technology Fast 50.

On November 24, the third Golden Compass Awards, jointly presented by Morning News and Sharp Observer, announced their results. Considering the development of the internet finance industry and the continuous strengthening of industry regulation and compliance requirements, this year's theme was "Fintech, Forging Ahead." Zhirong Group, recognized for its focused and outstanding application of artificial intelligence technology in the financial sector, won "Annual Outstanding AI Application Enterprise."

5

Suishou Tech Wins

"2017 Fintech Most Investable Enterprise"

The fourth Fintech CEO Summit & Investment Conference, themed "Innovation • Iteration • Empowerment," was held in Shenzhen. Government leaders including He Jie, Deputy District Mayor of Futian District People's Government, and Li Ning, Vice Chairman of Futian District CPPCC, as well as multiple senior figures from the fintech industry and venture capital sectors attended. The conference also presented awards to leading enterprises in relevant fields. Suishou Tech (Suishouji) was among ten enterprises receiving the "2017 Fintech Most Investable Enterprise" award.

6

Che300 Wins

"Automotive Financial Service Innovation Award"

From November 13–15, the "2017 China Automotive Circulation Industry Annual Meeting & Expo," hosted by China Automobile Dealers Association, was held at Suzhou International Expo Center. During the conference, the association presented 2017 annual honors related to China's automotive circulation industry. Che300, recognized for its outstanding industry contribution in financial services and excellent market reputation, won the 2017 China Automotive Circulation Industry "Automotive Financial Service Innovation Award."

7

Niu Technologies Wins China Outstanding Design Award

Niu Technologies' smart lithium electric vehicle M1 series was among the winners of the 19th China Outstanding Design Award. "This M1 series is already a 'professional award winner,'" Niu co-founder and Supply Chain VP He Weihua told reporters. As early as September last year, the M1 series won Taiwan's Golden Pin Design Award. In March this year, the M1 emerged from entries across 54 countries to capture Germany's Red Dot Design Award, known as the "Oscar of design" — also a first for a Chinese electric vehicle brand on the international design stage. In August, the M1 won the U.S. IDEA Industrial Design Excellence Award; in September, it received Japan's Good Design Award, known as the "Oriental design Oscar." This means that among today's three major international design awards (U.S. IDEA, Germany Red Dot, and Germany iF), Niu Technologies has captured two — a "zero breakthrough" for the entire electric vehicle industry's international design quality rating.

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