YPX Cayman Holdings Co., Ltd. (http://www.ypxfood.com) announced today the closing of its third round of fundraising of US $ 11.5 million, which bring the total financing raised in the last two months to US $18 million. LionRock Capital served as the lead investor for the latest financing round, with follow-on investments from Qiming Venture Partners, and Ignition Capital.
YPX has also recently received additional equity funding from Mitsui Global Ventures, Hotung Venture, and renowned
entrepreneurs such as former DBS Bank and Singapore Airlines Chairman Mr. Koh Boon Hwee and Nasdaq-listed 51Job.com founders Mr. Norman Lui and Mr. Michael Feng Yunlei. In addition, YPX also secured a US $ 2.5 million venture debt financing from Western Technology Investment, a Silicon Valley based firm that financed Facebook and Google in their very early days. With this fresh funding, YPX Cayman will quickly open more stores within the Eastern and Northern parts of China; keeping close to its strategy of building a large fast casual food and beverage (F&B) chain platform.
YPX built its first store in Dec 2010, and ever since then, the Company has been growing rapidly. During this time, YPX has also invested heavily in its operational infrastructure, IT systems and human resources in order to achieve a sustainable and healthy growth. By end of 2012 YPX will have 30 Cloud 9 stores in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Changzhou, Hefei, Beijing and Tianjin. Key factors in being able to achieve this growth are due to YPX’s simplicity in execution, scientific approach to menu engineering, and high quality of employee training. Over the next 2 years, YPX aims to open at least another 90 stores throughout China, and become one of the fastest growing quick service restaurant brands in China.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121109/CN09753)
“With this new round of funding, YPX is now poised to take on a larger territory in China. Our goal is to open in territories that we never could have gotten into earlier. With the internal economy still growing and consumers are gravitating towards more value-for-money food fare, we want to take advantage of current tail wind. As we grow, we have to strengthen our infrastructure such as IT, Training, Product Development and hiring of more talents. No chain store business can grow profitably without a solid infrastructure and a good pool of talents. Ultimately, our objective is to provide good value food that is fresh, safe and tasty at a very affordable price proposition. There should be No Bad Meal each time you eat in Cloud 9. And that in turn will build a sustainable business that eventually will provide great returns to our investors and employees. Our focus is on our staff members. Each one is a family member and will be treated as such. We want to be known to be an employer of choice in China, one that provides the best salaries and benefits and also the best environment. In YPX, we award stock options to our employees, our staff members come first. Only then can they take very good care of our valued customers,” said YPX Cayman Founder and Chief Executive Officer Chris Tay.