China may be the “workshop to the world,” but it’s still a lightweight when it comes to minting global consumer brands like Coca Cola (KU.US), Walmart (WMT.US) and Carrefour (CA.PA).
One company that’s trying to change that is Nebula Brands, which is hitching a ride with e-commerce titan Amazon (AMZN.US) to try and build up some of China’s most promising but lesser-known online brands targeting global consumers. The company announced on July 27 that it wrapped up its latest funding round, cementing its position as head of the class in China for a booming group known collectively as “Amazon aggregators.”
Such aggregators scour the ecosystem of third-party brands selling their wares on Amazon’s vast network of global marketplaces, and purchase the ones they see as having the best growth potential. The group has collectively soaked up a whopping $15 billion in investor cash since its emergence over the last five years, according to Marketplace Pulse, a market research company focused on e-commerce.