Fleet management service provider G7 has finished a new round of fundraising with a record $320 million from multiple investors.
The round was led by Hopu Fund along with China Broadband Capital, Mountain Morning Capital, Intelligent Fund of Funds, Total Energy Ventures, the venture capital arm of oil company Total, and TH Capital. Existing investors GLP, Bank of China Group Investment and Tencent also participated.
Beijing-based G7 claims that this round marks the highest among Internet of Things (IoT) startups in the world. The company has raised a significant pile over the past three years. It completed its Series C fundraising of $75 million in April 2016, with money from Tencent, Singapore sovereign investment fund Temasek and Easter Bell Venture Capital. G7 finished another $45 million strategic fundraising in February 2017 from China Development Bank and GLP. And in December last year, it raised $70 million from GLP and Bank of China.
Founded in 2011, G7 set up a platform to provide a management system for truck freight companies. It then expanded its business by cooperating with some delivery companies such as DHL and ZTO Express. Later on, the company started to develop hardware for trucks and trailers. Its system helps companies track deliveries and manage freight.
G7 claims more than 60,000 clients and says that it has 800,000 vehicles in its system.
The company also set up autonomous trucking company Inceptio, as a joint venture in October, with GLP and electronic car manufacturer NIO.
There has been a heavy investment into China's logistics sector over the past few months. Ant Financial led $144 million investment into logistics management platform Keking last week; GLP participated in the $216 million fundraising for lorry logistics company Juma last month, and Warburg Pincus invested $100 million in a logistics robot developer called Geek+ in November. The investment in G7 this time is the biggest so far.
Since last year Beijing has called for the development of “smart logistics” and has encouraged private and foreign capital to help build logistics infrastructure companies. Chinese internet giants have also actively invested in the sector, not only to develop e-commerce itself but also in any technology that can apply to the industry. But as the lowest hanging fruit, logistics is where the money has been gathering.
