Source Code Capital Portfolio Company Huzan Technology Closes $30 Million Series B Round, Existing Backer Source Code Capital Continues to Increase Stake

源码资本·March 19, 2019·0·4

Leading the social retail services space

Source Code Capital portfolio company Huzan Tech, a leading domestic social retail solution provider, announced today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. HSG led the round with continued support, while existing shareholders Source Code Capital and GSR Ventures, along with other top-tier investors, all participated with follow-on investments. Mumian Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor.

According to reports, Huzan Tech completed four consecutive funding rounds in 2018, with investors including Ameba Capital, HSG, Source Code Capital, and GSR Ventures. Huzan founder Junlong Liao revealed that this round of funding will focus on team upgrades, R&D upgrades, service upgrades, and product upgrades — further deepening its commitment to the social retail market and empowering merchants to achieve new value growth in the social commerce era.

Leading the Social Retail Service Sector

In 2018, social retail entered a fast track of development. Mainstream e-commerce platforms, emerging players, and top-tier brands alike were all racing to establish their social retail presence, pushing the market past the trillion-yuan valuation mark.

Data shows that in 2017, China's social retail user base reached 223 million, up 46.7% from 2016, with an average annual growth rate exceeding 45% in 2018. The user base is projected to grow to 573 million by 2020.

2019 is set to be the golden year and takeoff moment for social retail. More and more traditional e-commerce and offline retail merchants are adopting social retail business models as entirely new growth engines, using WeChat — the super social platform — to reach underserved lower-tier user groups and capture new market increments.

Within this increasingly mature social retail commercial ecosystem, Huzan has gradually emerged as a pioneer and builder of social platform infrastructure, as well as the most reliable partner for retail merchants.

As a professional social retail solution provider, Huzan has maintained its lead despite intensifying competition in the social retail service sector since 2018. The company's core team began developing peripheral applications for social platforms as early as 2014 to help merchants efficiently manage and maintain existing customers through social software. With deep technical expertise and industry experience, Huzan has consistently outpaced competitors in product deployment, business development, and funding progress, firmly holding the top position.

Founder & CEO Junlong Liao (right)

Founding Partner & COO Wei Shao (left)

Integrated Services, Empowering New Growth

Junlong Liao, Huzan Tech's founder and CEO, revealed that the company will further strengthen its management team, upgrade its services, and build out its technical R&D and product teams, while accelerating the iterative development of products and service platforms for social retail.

"What retail truly lacks is not a complete disruption of online and offline retail industries, but rather a tool-based solution that can integrate online and offline channels, helping merchants improve efficiency and reduce costs," Liao said. "Huzan's vision is to build the premier social retail platform, empowering merchants in the social retail space to understand, reach, and retain existing customers through smarter methods and strategies in this rapidly evolving internet social retail era — delivering higher-quality services and products to users, thereby achieving new value and revenue growth."

Huzan Tech was officially founded in January 2017, with continuous deep industry engagement and meticulous product refinement. Drawing on the team's profound understanding of retail e-commerce and private-domain traffic, the company has experienced rapid growth across enterprise scale, product R&D, and market expansion over its more than two years of operation.

To date, the company has built a lean team of over 200 people, distributed across Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Fuzhou, Shenzhen, and other cities and regions.

Reportedly, more than 10,000 merchants now use Huzan's social retail platform to efficiently manage and maintain tens of millions of existing customers across social platforms. This includes Fortune 500 brands and large national retail chains.

"Retail operations have shifted from a traffic-centric mindset to a user-centric one," said Wei Shao, Huzan Tech's founding partner and COO. "Merchants care about more than just traffic or customer volume — they want to know how to develop super users with strong repurchase behavior and establish seamless connections with them through social platforms. As more merchants begin prioritizing the maintenance and value of existing customers, Huzan's value is becoming increasingly apparent."

Shao added: "What the Huzan team has built through more than four years of persistent effort has been gradual development, not explosive growth — accumulating value bit by bit, not striking lucky. We don't follow trends; we focus on identifying needs and meeting them, helping domestic retailers keep pace with trends and development in this era of consumption upgrade."

Huzan Tech is more than just a SaaS company — it's a one-stop solution provider positioned to help merchants build private-domain traffic pools. Shao elaborated: "As traffic dividends continue to diminish, Huzan Tech aims to help merchants better extract value from existing customers and maintain those relationships through social platforms."

"To this end, while building the Huzan social retail platform, we also hope to leverage our deep research and experience in social marketing to provide comprehensive merchant services through our extensive after-sales team, acting as academy-style consultants. Truly helping merchants understand social retail and construct their own private-domain traffic."

Reportedly, Huzan's entire merchant service system is now highly mature, which has driven the company's market share to continue climbing.

As Mobile Internet penetrates deeper into lower-tier markets, the diverse social relationship energy latent behind each user becomes increasingly prominent, and social retail models will inevitably become the primary operational battlefield for the future retail industry. But whenever that time comes, Huzan will always bear the responsibility of "serving merchants well," upholding its mission to help merchants focus on service and product quality, and do better business. Going forward, Huzan Tech will continue empowering retail merchants, driving industry innovation, and becoming the premier social retail platform.