New Core Tech has just closed C-round fund-raising valued up to USD 35M

SHANGHAI, Sept. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New Core Tech announced that it has just closed its C-round raise-funding valued up to USD 35M, which led by XiaoMi, Shunwei Capital and followed by Northern Light Venture Capital and Cowin Capital etc. Binjiang Tao, the CEO of New Core Tech, discloses that the fund will be largely used to partnership and channel expansion, talent acquisition etc. This is the second round of financing since this year for New Core Tech. Early in Feb this year, New Core Tech has just finished its B+ round financing led by IDG Capital and Cowin Capital.

New Core Tech aims at providing SaaS and aPaaS especially for discrete manufacturing industry, covering Cloud MES (Manufacturing Execution System), Cloud ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and TQM (Total Quality Management) four major modules. Its smart factory solution has successfully helped thousands factories in China accomplish digital transformation through intelligence decision making process, manufacturing data collection, data analysis. Until now, its products have been widely applied in Automotive parts and High-tech Equipment manufacturing industry, with clients such as ENN Group, ZhongZhou Group etc.

The MES system provided by New Core Tech essentially is a comprehensive management system serving the operational layer of workshops within the factories. Through collecting data from manufacturing machines, such as CNC, New Core Tech is able to provide factories with a suite of resource allocation, detail scheduling, dispatching production units, document control, data collection, labor management, quality management, process management, maintenance management,product tracking and genealogy and performance analysis. Although some enterprise-sized factories have already adopted various kinds of digital management systems, MES should be the core of digital transformation since it accelerates the flow of work throught the shop. Early in 2016, Chinese government has issued an official document to point out that it is essential for discrete and process manufacturing to employ MES system.

It is reported that MES accounts 29% of the total industrial software market in China 2020. Early this year, there are nearly ten MES companies who closed fund-raising in the market, including New Core Tech. Moreover, as the market develops, most of the SMB factories has been gradually getting rid of the phenomenon of "pushing the missing components, arguing for the scheduling, hand-writing the transcript", which has dramatically increased the demand for MES domestically.

Early in Feb this year, industrial software has been selected as the major R&D focus by government, which signals that it has been the most prioritized strategic investment in China. Meantime, the Covid-19 situation speeds up the process of digital transformation of domestic manufacturing industry, especially the small-and-medium-sized enterprises. The wiliness and degree of acceptance of adopting MES has been enormously enhanced, they are expecting to increase the productivity of manufacturing through employing MES system.

According to the report named "2020 Smart Factory and MES Application" by Doctor Huang Pei, the current domestic MES is still way under mature. Most of the manufacturing enterprises are developing their in-house MES or hiring outsourcing team to co-develop, leading to large amounts of sunk cost.

The CEO of New Core Tech, Binjiang Tao, told 36Kr that, it takes a long journey for a MES to be actually  implemented in the factory, and most of the time many just ends with nothing.

The MES by New Core Tech is using a SaaS and aPaaS model, not only serving the top-tier clients through customized service, but also serving the long-tail clients through more than 60 selection of modules. Clients could choose the corresponding modules based on their actual needs, which perfectly solve the pain point of long implementation process of MES.

The next phase of the evolution of MES, Binjiang Tao believes, will be the eco-system that supprts end-to-end supply chain planning and execution functions. New Core Tech has been dedicating to partner with other SaaS to co-build the digital eco-system through open API. It has been currently integrated with and compatible with systems like CRM, OA, ERP, PLM, PDM, MDC etc in order to provide comprehensive digital solution covering different departments inside and outside of factories.

Know-how in Automotive parts and High-tech Equipment manufacturing industry by New Core Tech has made it user-friendly to the clients within the industry. In fact, professionality in specific vertical industry is the key strategy of most of the MES players domestically, such as Morewis focusing on electronic packaging, PCBA, and BlackLake focusing on food, medical industry etc.

It is commonly acknowledged that MES is hard to copy, industry know-how of specific vertical really matters. Eventually, it will be hard to provide standardized MES product across different industries, especially for domestic MES providers. To focus on one specific vertical is the key to build up "the moat".

SOURCE New Core Tech