(Yicai Global) Dec. 20 -- Hipac, a Chinese platform that provides cross-border e-commerce services to merchants and franchisers selling imported maternal and baby care products, finished its D-round funding yesterday, in which it netted USD100 million.

Its operator Hangzhou Yangtuo Network Technology still has no plans to go public, Zhao Chen, its founder, who is a former senior executive of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, told Yicai Global in an interview.

Hipac instituted its 'Family Plan' to jointly grow with small and mid-sized shops that peddle maternity and child products in March last year to entice more physical stores to join. The platform offered giveaways worth CNY50 million (USD7.1 million) in total to its partner shops, awarding these options in accordance with the physical shops' spending in goods purchased.

"The initial intention of starting this business was to offer cross-border e-commerce services to brick-and-mortar stores, but I gradually found that most customers were merchants selling maternal and baby care products, and the price difference for these kind of items varied greatly in online and offline scenarios at that time. For instance, a pack of [Japanese] Kao-branded diapers sold for CNY125 (USD17.9) online, but for CNY148 offline."

"Renowned brands like [US infant formula makers] Wyeth and Abbott Laboratories mainly focus their investment on staffers, ads and other key factors in the significant markets of both first-and second-tier cities," Zhao also noted, adding, "but investing in third-and fourth-tier cities with dispersed customer structures is uneconomical [for them]."

Hipac supplies these franchisers with traceable business data in third-and fourth-tier cities and distribution system where prices can be managed, Zhao added.

The firm's positioning is a 'business-to-business-to-customer' e-commerce platform linking upstream franchisers with downstream stores in third-and fourth-tier cities and improving shops' efficiency in distribution, new brand promotion and customer-related operations.

Hipac successively completed its A, B and C rounds of financing from December 2015 to March last year.

Editor: Ben Armour