BEIJING, July 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Venturous Group, China’s first Citytech™ Group, is establishing a foothold in China’s fast-growing US$220 billion online apparel, footwear, bags and accessories market by investing an undisclosed amount as the lead investor in the Series A funding round of AI start-up, WeStyle.ai. The investment is Venturous’ first in Smart Commerce, and raises the Group’s ecosystem investment verticals from four to five.
China’s market for online fashion is the world’s largest and booming. It is already the largest e-commerce category in China and is expected to double to reach US$450 billion in annual sales and represent 45% of the global market by 2025. With new and disruptive technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and live streaming, business opportunities that weren’t accessible until recently are suddenly possible.
Mr Benson Tam, Founder and Chairman of Venturous Group, says: “We see WeStyle.ai as a terrific opportunity: a brilliant tech product and platform, as well as a unique business idea and model that is easily scalable. But ultimately, our investment decision came down to the people: WeStyle.ai’s co-founders have an extensive and proven entrepreneurial track record of combining Deep Tech and lifestyle. This fits very well into Venturous’ ecosystem investments.”
While the core focus of Venturous Group is Smart City infrastructure data-technology services, Venturous also invests in, builds and operates complementary Internet businesses that leverage the Deep Tech capabilities of its core investments and the Group’s proprietary ecosystem. By making core and ecosystem investments, the Group is creating a Smart Citytech ecosystem with possible synergies and integrations across the portfolio.
WeStyle.ai is such an investment and is thereby joining Venturous’ prior investments on the ecosystem side. Previously, Venturous has made investments in companies in the ecosystem verticals of Smart Community, Smart Finance, Smart Health and Smart Automation.
Dr Song Li, Co-Founder and Chairman of WeStyle.ai, says: “Chinese fashion e-commerce represents a fantastic opportunity. The market is already enormous and growing at an unprecedented rate. WeStyle.ai is in a unique position to take a leadership role in expanding personalised online styling services for this retail segment. Our research shows that consumers are fed up with looking through an overwhelming number of products to find items that best suit their styles and body types. By leveraging rapidly advancing AI technologies, combined with the personal touch of human stylists, WeStyle.ai has a very compelling proposition for this immense target group of mass market fashion consumers.”
Mr Ren Tao, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WeStyle.ai, says: “All of the WeStyle.ai co-founders already built Zhenai.com from scratch into China’s largest paid dating service. Few start-ups can claim to have that kind of entrepreneurial experience and track record starting out. This is a unique and critical advantage when we embark on this new journey of building our next venture – and this time in a significantly larger addressable market.”
