Chehaoduo

Chehaoduo Group is a Beijing-based used- and new-vehicle e-commerce group built around two consumer brands: Guazi, a consumer-to-consumer used-car trading platform, and Maodou, which sells new cars through direct sales and financial leasing. Guazi traces its roots to Ganji Haoche, a used-car service launched by classifieds site Ganji in late 2014, which took the Guazi Used Car name and moved to Guazi.com in September 2015 under founder Yang Haoyong (also referred to in English-language press as Mark Yang), who had previously founded Ganji.com and co-led its 2015 merger with 58.com before turning to used cars. Guazi and the newly formed Maodou combined into Chehaoduo Group in October 2017.

The company raised a Series A of roughly $250 million by September 2016, a $400 million-plus Series B in June 2017, a Series B+ of over $180 million that October, an $818 million Series C led by Tencent in March 2018, a further $162 million Series C+ that October, and a $1.5 billion Series D from the SoftBank Vision Fund in February 2019 that valued the group at more than $9 billion — at the time one of the largest financings ever raised by a Chinese used-car company — followed by a $200 million top-up from Sequoia Capital China and SoftBank in May 2020.

Chehaoduo has said it recorded overall profitability across both the Guazi and Maodou businesses in the fourth quarter of 2019. As of 2024 Guazi says it ranks first in China by transaction volume for used new-energy vehicles, and it has built car-export service partnerships reaching Georgia, Ghana, Algeria and Poland. Chehaoduo was reported in August 2024 to be weighing a US listing, though as of this research no registration statement has been filed and the company remains privately held.

For an investor the case rests on scale in a fragmented, still-consolidating Chinese used-car sector and on the company's own claims of profitability since 2019; the risk is that no priced primary round has been confirmed in this research beyond 2020 with a verified primary source, so any current valuation reference may be dated (some secondary reports describe additional 2021 activity, not independently confirmed here), and the company competes against rivals including Uxin and Souche in a market exposed to Chinese auto-sales cycles and regulatory scrutiny of offshore listings.