MOTI, the No. 2 electronic cigarette brand in the domestic market, has closed Round A financing round of $31 million on July 17, 2019. This round is led by MSA Capital.
MOTI completed the Pre-A round of 10 million US dollars invested by Zhen Fund in January 2019. It has been working in the overseas electronic cigarette market and it returned to the domestic market at the beginning of this year. It has rich experience in electronic cigarettes marketing. The main products in China are pod systems and disposable vapes MOJO.
MSA, a private equity investor, has managed more than $1 billion and has completed more than 80 investments in TMT and health care. The main person in charge is Zeng Yu, the managing partner.
MSA’s main cases include Meituan, Weilai, Huada Gene, Pinti, Mushroom Street, Uber, BOSS Direct Employment, Mobike, Searching for Steel Nets, Piggy Short Rent, Squirrel Pulling, etc.
MOTI’s second round of financing started around March this year.
According to the previous data, MOTI earned nearly 140 million yuan in revenue and net profit of about 10 million yuan in the first quarter of 2019.
According to industry sources, MOTI now has monthly revenue of more than ten million US dollars, becoming the second electronic cigarette brand after RELX with a revenue of more than ten million US dollars.
MOTI’s business is mainly divided into domestic and overseas parts. It is expected to achieve 2 billion yuan of GMV in China this year. It has signed more than 70,000 offline stores and is expected to achieve 500 million yuan of GMV overseas. At present, MOTI has covered 12 countries in Europe, America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
At present, the revenue is mainly supported by overseas, but the domestic market is developing rapidly. Compared with domestic revenue, overseas business revenue is about 4:1.
MOTI ranks third in the top-selling brand list of JD mall 618 electronic cigarette campaign. At the New Consumption Summit of Z Age held in June, MOTI ranked second on the list of electronic cigarettes.
However, the founding team of MOTI is very low-key, who’s mainly represented by CMO Zhou Jie, while the rest of the senior management team is very low-key, and there is almost no public information online.
The MOTI management team comes from a number of first-line Internet and fast consumer companies.
MOTI financing information has not been officially confirmed, but cross-validation of different sources shows that the round of financing has been completed indeed.
If the information is finally confirmed by the official, it means that the competition of vape brand has entered the second stage, and also means that MOTI’s sustainability has been recognized by the capital.
Recently, the brand of LINX, which was established in early 2019, has been announced by the official. Last week, LINX announced the completion of the fourth round of financing of tens of millions of yuan, led by Wing Capital and Ningbo Sipid. Forward, FLOW completed two rounds of financing of around $10 million invested by Matrixpartners.
RELX may also complete a new round of $2.4 billion valuation involving DST, but RELX officials denied that DST was involved. This round of investment may involve DST CEO Yuri Milner himself.
