Arctic Data Raises 20 Million RMB in Pre-A Round Led by Oasis Capital

Arctic Data, a pioneer in enterprise data search engines in China, recently completed a RMB 20 million pre-Series A round. The round was led by Oasis Capital, with follow-on investment from existing shareholders Plum Ventures and Incapital.

Liu Yixin, founder and CEO of Arctic Data, said: "Oasis is a research-driven firm with deep understanding and thoughtful perspectives on the industry. Their appreciation for vitality and respect for the instinct to grow have shown us infinite possibilities."

Founded in 2018, Arctic Data operates in the B2B SaaS market. Its product is an analytical search engine for internal enterprise data, lowering the barrier to entry and cost of data analysis so that frontline business staff can easily leverage data insights. For enterprises, the goal is to solve the need to access and effectively use data — and to do so at low cost. Against the backdrop of digital transformation, as business operations grow increasingly complex and companies complete their initial informatization phase, data volume surges dramatically. This creates enormous demand for how enterprises store, manage, and apply data, giving rise to a massive big data market. From traditional data warehouses handling storage needs to more recent BI tools and data middle platforms focused on data mining and analysis, all aim to support efficient enterprise decision-making.

In typical enterprise operations, internal demand for data analysis usually requires hiring "data analysts," with related requests taking an average of about a week to fulfill. From a cost perspective, each in-house data analyst typically supports 5-10 data requesters, with average personnel costs of RMB 300,000-500,000 per year in China. Achieving the talent ratios of mature markets would be prohibitively expensive. Therefore, using machines to assist or even replace data analysts represents a market opportunity — and this is where Arctic Data's commercial value lies.

In terms of market size, according to an IDC report, China's business intelligence software market reached USD 490 million in 2019 and is expected to grow to USD 1.19 billion by 2024, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.2%. The United States market has already produced leading companies including Tableau and ThoughtSpot.

The Arctic Data team currently numbers over 20 people, nearly all of whom are in R&D. Founder and CEO Liu Yixin graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in statistics and previously worked at CoreLogic, a US-listed real estate data company, where he developed internal data analysis products. In 2018, recognizing the vast gap between domestic and international markets in the data analysis ecosystem, and with the ambition to "build a business data search engine that anyone can use," Liu Yixin founded the company.

Arctic Data's current product highlights are twofold: first, ease of use — the interface works like a search engine, allowing users to directly input questions and receive data insights with virtually zero learning curve; second, easy deployment — built on a cloud-native architecture, the product is nearly ready to use out of the box, significantly reducing deployment costs for enterprises.

Liu Yixin noted that dozens of enterprises have already adopted Arctic Data's product, with customers concentrated in the internet, finance, and retail sectors. On the commercial front, specific contract prices depend on the client's scale and data volume, with deal sizes in the hundreds of thousands of RMB range.

Regarding industry competition, Arctic Data's focused domain has relatively few domestic enterprise-level players. Competition comes partly from major internet companies, which have internal teams conducting R&D in this direction. Arctic Data's primary benchmark is ThoughtSpot, an overseas business analytics software provider. Source: 36Kr Appreciating Vitality

What does vitality mean to you?

Vitality, to me, is the instinct to survive and the desire to grow. A seed in a rock crevice, given light and water, can grow wildly. Enterprises in the digital age need to become living organisms capable of spontaneous and vigorous growth. Data is the internal driving force of enterprise growth, and we hope to become a catalyst that helps enterprises unlock their vitality in this new era.

— Liu Yixin, Founder and CEO of Arctic Data

Oasis Capital is a new-generation venture capital firm in China, dedicated to discovering the most vital entrepreneurs of the next decade and growing alongside them to create long-term value. "Appreciating vitality" is Oasis's vision and mission. This vitality is both the direction of structural transformation in our era and the resilience and evolutionary power of entrepreneurs. Oasis Capital focuses on early and growth-stage investments, with individual ticket sizes ranging from USD 3 million to USD 30 million, concentrating on technology-enabled services in education, healthcare, and enterprise services to support China's technology-driven new service upgrade.