Shanghai-based apartment rental service QK365 announced it received a funding of RMB180 million (approx: US$29 million) in its Series B financing round.
QK365 was established in 2012 as a long-term apartment rental O2O service for white-collar workers in Shanghai. It now has over 40 service centers catering to some 30,000 members. It manages around 20,000 apartments with rents typically below RMB2,000 (approx: US$322).
QK364 founder Guangjie Jin said its inventory is currently growing at a rate of 1,000-2,000 apartments per month and will reach 5,000 apartments per month by the end of 2015.
When it was first set up, QK365 received undisclosed sums from Newsion Venture Capital in an angel investment and from Fortune Capital in the Series A financing round.
Mr. Jin said the long-term apartment rental market meets the strong housing demand arising from China’s urbanization process. The colossal demand has spawned a large number of apartment rental brands in the last two years, including original brands and hotels remodeled as apartments. “Our B Series financing round from SAIF Partners in 2013 helped boost our original white-collar apartment rental brand, set up in 2012,” he said.
Mr. Jin said QK365 relies on an online light-development model instead of the traditional heavy-asset leasing model to achieve its “administrated housing + stylish furnishing + after-service” online one-stop service model.
QK365 is mainly responsible for consolidating vacancies from landlords, helping them list and managing all its properties via an IT system and smart facilities. Its management service includes consulting, reservations, contracts, payment and DIY repairs.
“All kinds of problems exist in a distributed management model, for example the sheer volume of information from every aspect of operations, including resource procurement, remodeling, sales, information administration and management, creates a bottleneck for information processing,” he said.
He said QK365 will rapidly scale up after its Series B financing round and focus on expanding its coverage in the Yangtze River delta region with its online network to service up to one million young people.
The scale of the housing market in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou is already worth RMB300 billion (approx: US$48 billion) while the scale of China’s rental market has already reached RMB2.5 trillion (approx: US$403 billion) nationwide. On average, 39,000 people seek apartment rentals and 16,000 people seek roommates every day in Shanghai.(Translation by David)
