China Digest: Snack brand Xueji bags $86m; Nebula Graph raises Series A roundDragonBall Capital, the CVC arm of Meituan, backed the snack brand’s Seri…

Chinese retail brand Xueji Chaohuo and open-source graph database Nebula Graph have secured new financing to expand operations.

Snack brand Xueji Chaohuo closes $86m in Series A round

Xueji Chaohuo, a Chinese retail brand that sells roasted seeds and nuts, has raised 600 million yuan ($86.1 million) in a Series A round to help the business scale its retail presence to over 1,000 stores this year.

DragonBall Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of Chinese food delivery giant Meituan, and Beijing-based private equity firm GenBridge Capital backed the Series A round. Robert Chang, a founding partner of GenBridge Capital, will join the startup’s Board of Directors as part of the deal, according to a statement on Thursday.

Xueji was founded in 2002 in eastern China’s Jinan City to focus on the R&D, production, and sales of roasted seeds, preserved fruits, nuts, and other leisure snacks.

The Series A round will enable Xueji to leverage the retail industry resources and network of Meituan-backed DragonBall Capital, which was founded in 2017 with Tencent Holdings as a limited partner. DragonBall Capital has invested in local consumer businesses including ice cream and tea brand Mixue Bingcheng, tea chain HeyTea, and coffee store operator Manner Coffee.

Jeneration Capital leads Series A round for Nebula Graph 

Nebula Graph, a Chinese open-source and distributed graph database, on Thursday announced the completion of its Series A funding round led by Greater China-focused asset management firm Jeneration Capital.

The Series A round, which is said to have pooled “tens of millions of US dollars,” attracted participation from Nebula’s existing shareholders Source Code Capital, Matrix Partners China, and Redpoint China Ventures.

As its fourth funding round, the Series A round will allow its parent firm Vesoft Inc to invest further in the R&D of Nebula Graph, with an aim to provide “more stable and more efficient data storage and graph computing technologies” to its corporate clients, according to a statement.

Nebula Graph has delivered big data analytics solutions for corporate clients including Tencent and its ubiquitous messaging service WeChat, smartphone brand Vivo, Meituan, telecom service provider China Mobile, and video-sharing app Kuaishou.

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