The Big Deal: RedBaby’s $25 Million in VC Funds

Redbaby is a business-to-consumer (B2C) website based in Beijing. The company started off dealing in children's products, selling them through an online portal. It has broadened its product line, and Redbaby is the biggest deal so far for venture capital in 2007.

Alarm:Clock points out that Redbaby is not a new comer to VC funding. The company used $10 million in VC funds it got from Northern Light Venture Capital and New Enterprise Associates a year ago to buy out some of the competition - specifically, the pregnancy and infant health care site Ahua.com.

The guys at the Alarm:Clock see Redbaby as mimicking the Amazon Dot Com model of e-commerce. “Redbaby plans to increase the number of its subsidiaries from six to 20 over the next two years,” they said.

Redbaby's latest round of funding was reported by China eCapital in August - another $25 million from KPCB China, New Enterprise Associates and Northern Light VC. China eCapital called Redbaby “China's largest multi-channel direct sales retailer…” While Redbaby started out with children's products and worked from a base in Beijing, the company now also deals in cosmetics, nutritional supplements and household products and has some 900 employees spread out from Shanghai to Chengdu.

China eCapital may be exaggerating Redbaby's place in the market a little. A report published by Tekrati in May said that Redbaby was among the top ten companies in China's B2C industry. They ranked ninth, with just a one percent market share then. The report point out that the top ten companies together accounted for only 50% of the B2C market in China.

VC's seem to be betting that Redbaby will stay a money maker in B2C in China.

See article.