On October 12, 2023, Harvest (09676.HK), GenBridge Capital’s portfolio, was officially listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This IPO will support the company in maintaining its leadership in China’s premium kitchen staple category, further fortifying its origin base network and supply chain strengths, while driving continuous growth in brand influence.
At the IPO ceremony, Mr. Bing Wang, Chairman and Executive Director of Harvest, stated: “Our mission is to provide Chinese consumers with high-quality and healthy kitchen foods. Operating in the fast-growing kitchen staple track, we represent a core category in the trillion-yuan rice and grains market. We have spent years cultivating a full industry chain from farm to table, always serving the daily meals of 1.4 billion Chinese people. Standing at this new starting point, we will continue to innovate and deliver better food products, expand through multi-channel access, and drive comprehensive growth. We aim to provide long-term value for shareholders and investors—and to bring China’s premium rice to the world.”
Chang Bin, Founding Partner of GenBridge Capital, commented: “Harvest is a flagship company we were fortunate to invest in while seeking next-generation national brand champions. It is a true ‘people’s brand’ born from the dining tables of everyday families. While kitchen staples may seem traditional, the category holds enormous potential for upgrading. Today’s consumers demand better products and more refined experiences. Through a well-planned capacity layout and highly efficient supply chain, Harvest has leveraged the rise of online platforms to outpace traditional brands. Looking ahead, we are confident that the company’s visionary leadership team will use this IPO as a springboard for continued investment in category expansion and channel growth—leading the branding and modernization of Chinese agriculture and placing a healthy bowl of food on the tables of millions of households.”
Back in 2020, GenBridge Capital led the Series A round of Harvest and has since followed up with multiple investments, becoming the company’s earliest and largest external institutional investor. Our conviction stems from a strong belief in discovering next-generation “national brands.” In this essential, high-demand product category, structural shifts have enabled scalable growth—seizing channel traffic on the front end and strengthening supply chains on the back end—perfectly embodying GenBridge’s core investment thesis.
As a long-standing partner and witness to the company’s rapid growth, we sincerely congratulate Harvest for entering a new chapter in its journey as a national brand. In today’s challenging capital market environment, the company’s successful listing not only inspires confidence among other steadfast players in the consumer sector, but also opens up new paths for brand-driven growth in China’s food and agriculture industries.
Along the way, as a close partner witnessing the rapid growth of Harvest, we believe the company has achieved the following leading advantages in products, channels, and forward-looking growth strategies:
Good Products: Fresh and delicious
Harvest focuses on high quality and freshness. From what we’ve observed—from rice fields to dining tables—the company’s product excellence stems from well-positioned production bases and highly efficient supply chain management.
Great products start with great origins. In autumn 2021, the entire GenBridge team visited Wuchang, one of China’s most famous rice-producing areas, to trace the journey of a grain of rice from field to bowl. We saw firsthand how the unique natural environment of Northeast China nurtures rice that is fragrant, soft, and rich in flavor.
Wuchang is well-known for its black soil—nutrient-rich and up to 1 meter thick—and for being irrigated by the Longfengshan Reservoir and Lalin River. Located along the 45th parallel north, it enjoys a large diurnal temperature variation of 5.5°C more than areas on the same latitude during the rice filling stage. Its 140-day crop cycle allows for a greater accumulation of flavor and nutrition.
Proximity to fields is also key to efficiency. Not far from the rice paddies is Harvest’s modern processing plant, where we observed strict procedures for raw grain collection, processing, selection, and packaging. Grains are polished, color-sorted, and vacuum-sealed to preserve quality before being shipped to warehouses across China.
It works closely with local cooperatives, suppliers, and farmers to source high-quality raw materials. With continuous automation upgrades and five regional self-operated warehouses, it ensures timely nationwide delivery of fresh products.
The secret to success in staple food categories isn’t mysterious—it’s about sourcing from the best regions, using the most efficient production and transport, and delivering to consumers as quickly as possible. The principle is simple. What’s hard is executing it day after day—which is what Harvest does.
Strong Platform: Online-driven growth
Harvest’s high-quality growth over the past decade owes much to China’s internet infrastructure and the opportunities created by digital platforms.
Before our first investment in 2020, we had already noticed the brand’s strong performance online. On JD.com, Tmall, and other e-commerce platforms, it led sales in pre-packaged Northeast rice by offering multi-brand, multi-tier pricing strategies.
Its collaboration with emerging online platforms also helped the brand enter more young households.
Consumer interviews revealed that many families are now more willing to purchase healthier staples online—thanks to the speed and convenience of digital shopping.
A stable supply chain and efficient operations were key to its rise on e-commerce platforms. Even amid supply chain disruptions, Harvest proved resilient. During early 2020’s COVID-19 lockdowns, its employees lived and worked in plants in Wuchang and Shenyang Xinmin to ensure uninterrupted food production. Logistics via JD.com enabled nationwide delivery right to customers’ doors.
Thanks to these platforms, Harvest became a national brand from day one. With rising online penetration, the brand quickly secured top-of-mind recognition in the category. Through three differentiated brands—Shiyue Daotian“十月稻田”, Firewood Courtyard“柴火大院”, and Sunshine Family“福享人家”—the company effectively tapped into mass and premium markets, becoming a kitchen staple for over 120 million Chinese households. Its e-commerce success also laid the foundation for future multi-channel expansion.
Smart Strategy: Cross-category, multi-channel, brand building
Since its founding, Harvest has weathered market cycles while maintaining healthy growth, thanks to its forward-thinking strategic planning. The company has consistently aimed to serve consumers seeking healthier and more balanced diets, expanding beyond rice to grains, legumes, and dried goods.
Many young consumers first encountered the brand through products like corn, millet, or multigrain mixes. By anchoring its strategy in premium production regions and health-driven staples, Harvest has built a powerful cross-category engine—one that continues to fuel its long-term growth.
Leveraging the brand momentum built online, Harvest has, over the past few years, successfully replicated its valuable experience and operational efficiency across multi-channel management, achieving a seamless expansion from online to offline. Online, the company expanded from comprehensive e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall to social commerce and community group-buying platforms. Offline, it quickly gained traction in supermarket channels and further increased its penetration into NKA and LKA systems, continually building a nationwide distribution network.
Harvest places great importance on brand building, continuously reaching more consumers through its high-quality products and efficient multi-channel network. During its recent "New Rice Season" campaign, the company engaged young consumers through creative social media campaigns and partnered with CCTV.com’s Super Factory program to highlight its place of origin and strengthen brand influence. Centering around its brand positioning of “Premium Rice from Northeast China,” Harvest continues to deepen consumer recognition with every bag of rice sold, focusing on the core need for more aromatic staple foods.
Rice is the most common food on Chinese tables, but every grain reflects deep care.
Having worked alongside Harvest for the past three years, we’ve witnessed the rapid rise of a national brand. While this may not be a grand story of disruption, it is one filled with dedication and steady innovation—serving the simple yet essential goal of helping people eat better at every meal. In our view, this makes it one of the most valuable and meaningful stories in consumer development.
Over the past decade, Harvest has:
Built great products through optimal production regions and operational efficiency,
Achieved rapid growth via precise online operations,
Guided category expansion and multi-channel development through forward-looking strategies.
This success could not have been achieved without the founding team's decades of deep engagement in the grain industry, their strategic foresight, and outstanding leadership in building a high-performing team. Walking alongside them has been deeply rewarding and truly an honor.
Going public is just a small milestone on the path to conquering greater heights. We sincerely congratulate Harvest and look forward to seeing it reach even higher summits in the future. The journey to the top is still long and requires steadfast steps down roads less traveled. As founder Mr. Wang Bing often says:
“We constantly return to our entrepreneurial roots, stay grounded, and dedicate ourselves to delivering a bowl of quality rice to millions of families.”
Note
120 million households: Data sourced from Frost & Sullivan (Beijing) Consulting Co., Ltd.; calculated as the cumulative number of households served by Harvest across all sales channels in mainland China between 2018 and 2022, including both online and offline distribution. Research completed in June 2023.