Shanghai (ZXZC)- YKC, a Chinese third-party charging service provider, has completed its Series B2 funding round, which was invested by NIO Capital, the investment arm of the EV startup NIO, according to a post on YKC's WeChat account.

YKC'a charging service; photo credit: NIO Capital

Ian Zhu, a managing partner with NIO Capital, said the charging pile industry will see an explosive growth with the penetration rate of new energy vehicles (NEVs) further increasing. He added NIO Capital highly recognizes YKC's great ability to aggregate the country's charging pile operators. In other words, through YKC's platform, software suppliers, service operators, and data aggregators are able to make their systems connected and share resources, so as to allow terminal users to quickly charge their electric vehicles on different platforms and in different regions.

Mr. Zhu also noted NIO Capital is upbeat about YKC's development prospect based on its industry-leading direct-connected charging terminal network and input volume of electricity.

As China's largest third-party IoT (Internet of Things) SaaS (Software as a Service) charging platform, YKC has operated businesses in over 300 cities across China, served more than 2,500 charging pile operators, and directly linked over 120,000 charging piles, according to NIO Capital.

Prior to the NIO Capital-backed financing, YKC finished two rounds of fundraising in June 2021 and September 2018 respectively, which attracted such investors as CATL, Empower Investment, Hidden Hill Capital, and G2Link.