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The 3D modeling technology has benefited the glass industry in terms of cost reduction and improvement of transaction and communication efficiency.
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Atjubo.com has established ties with over 130 glass fabrication factories and garnered more than 5,700 customers through its platform.
Atjubo.com (聚玻网), a service platform that focuses on the glass industry, has just netted approximately 100 million yuan (approx. USD 15.83 million) in its Series A round led by Bull Capital Partners (雄牛资本), with participation from Qianhai Fund of Funds (前海母基金).
Its founder and CEO KANG Mingzhu said that the capital will be mainly used to bring in talents, expand market and develop new technologies. The company has so far raised capital to the tune of 150 million yuan (approx. USD 23.75 million), counting in the tens of millions yuan Pre-A+ round it secured from Tianchen Capital (天辰资本) and SR Capital (顺融资本) earlier.
The glass industry, citing KANG’s words, is plagued by two pain points: Intricate and inefficient purchasing process resulted from restricted access to information and the cruel fact that almost 85% of the payments are in sustained arrears even long after the goods have been delivered.
The glass processing factories, as an indispensable link bridging the glass fabrication factories and project contractors, are essentially “what the entire glass business hinges upon”. Atjubo.com, as KANG put it, is a B2B2B platform. And here is a simple breakdown of how its business is run: In the first “B2B” link, i.e. “from glass fabrication factories to glass processing factories”, Atjubo.com honors contracts and delivers goods themselves; while, in the second “B2B” link, i.e. “from glass processing factories to contractors like curtain wall suppliers, doors & windows suppliers and decoration companies”, Atjubo.com didn’t shift from a matchmaking model to a self-run one until June 2017.
Instead of diving right into a self-run model, the company’s decision to play a go-between first is indeed quite a sensible move, as dealing with contractors requires tolerance for delayed payment and to speak nothing of the fact that they often need non-standard products. Well, if the company has anything to thank for its successful transition from a go-between platform to a self-run one, it is 3D modeling technology.
With the application of 3D modeling technology in the glass industry, the transaction efficiency between glass processing factories and contractors like curtain wall suppliers, doors & windows suppliers and decoration companies is substantially boosted. For instance, a curtain wall of 40,000 to 50,000 square meters, which traditionally would take 20+ staff for about 6 months to complete all drawings and lofts, now takes only 4 to 5 minutes with 3D modeling technology, KANG told KrASIA. More importantly, a 99.9% accuracy rate is guaranteed when the model created is compared with the original one from every angle.
The 3D modeling technology has clearly benefited the glass industry substantially in terms of cost reduction and improvement of transaction and communication efficiency. Specifically, the technology has helped bring the cost for curtain wall down by nearly 20 yuan (approx. USD 3.16) per square meter to 5 yuan (approx. USD 0.79) per square meter.
In addition to the technology part, Atjubo.com is also flexing its muscles in territories including logistics and financial services. Its logistics arm Juma (聚马物流), by capitalizing on transport vehicles from third-party logistics operators, has, up to date, set up logistics operation centers in 8 cities including Beijing, Guangdong and Hong Kong. Additionally, its sub-organization Jubodai (聚玻贷), having inked partnerships with banks, is endorsing for medium and small-sized enterprises so that they can secure loans from banks to procure raw materials for glass fabrication.
By building a business that integrates almost every link of the whole glass industry chain (glass fabrication factory-glass processing factory-contractors like curtain wall suppliers, doors & windows suppliers and decoration companies), Atjubo.com has managed to beef up efficiency and trim costs. This has, in turn, helped it bring in a rising number of orders.
According to the team, Atjubo.com has, up till now, established ties with over 130 glass fabrication factories and garnered more than 5,700 customers through its platform. Aside from that, the value of the contracts honored by the Atjubo.com itself has reached one billion yuan (approx. USD 158.3 million) in 2017 and that number is expected to jump to 5 billion yuan (approx. USD 791.5 million) in 2018.
In 2018, the company looks to further extend its market to cover the 80,000+ glass stores across China, which combined consume 20% of the raw glass sheets sold in China. It’s also worth noting that its logistics arm Juma can now deliver goods to stores in a 10km range, which obviously meshes perfectly with its ambition to cover 80,000+ glass stores across China.
Beyond that, the company also aspires to replicate its business model in Southeast Asia and Africa by taking the same path that has proved successful in China.
